History of copyright law

History of copyright law
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Copyright was invented after the advent of the printing press and subsequent widening of public literacy. As a legal concept, its origins in Britain were from a reaction to printers’ monopolies at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In Britain the King of England and Scotland was concerned by the unregulated copying of books and used the royal prerogative to pass the Licensing Act of 1662 which established a register of licensed books and required a copy to be deposited with the Stationers Company, essentially continuing the licensing of material for the benefit of printers that had long been in effect. The Statute of Anne in 1709 was the first real copyright act, and gave the author in the new nation of Britain rights for a fixed period, after which the copyright expired. Internationally, the Berne Convention in 1887 set out the scope of copyright protection, and is still in force to this day. Copyright has grown from a legal concept regulating copying rights in the publishing of books and maps to one with a significant effect on nearly every modern industry, covering such items as sound recordings, films, photographs, software, and architectural works.

Chronology
Prehistory of copyright
Authors, patrons, and owners of works throughout the ages have tried to direct and control how copies of such works could be used once disseminated to others. Mozart’s patron, Baroness von Waldstätten, allowed his compositions created for her to be performed, while Handel’s patron, George I, jealously guarded “Water Music.”
Modern copyright has been influenced by an array of older legal rights that have been recognized throughout history, including the moral rights of the author who created a work, the economic rights of a benefactor who paid to have a copy made, the property rights of the individual owner of a copy, and a sovereign’s right to censor and to regulate the printing industry. Prior to the invention of movable type in the West in the mid-fifteenth century, texts were copied by hand and the small number of texts generated few occasions for these rights to be tested. Even during a period of a prospering book trade, during the Roman Empire when no copyright or similar regulations existed,[1] copying by those other than professional booksellers was rare. This is because books were, typically, copied by literate slaves, who were expensive to buy and maintain. Thus, any copier would have had to pay much the same expense as a professional publisher. Roman book sellers would sometimes pay a well regarded author for first access to a text for copying, but they had no exclusive rights to a work and authors were not normally paid anything for their work.[2]
During the centuries following the destruction of the Roman Empire, European literary undertakings were confined almost entirely to the monasteries. The Roman usage, under which authors could dispose of their works to booksellers and the latter could be secure of some commercial control of the property purchased, was entirely forgotten. (In Ken Follet’s novel The Pillars of the Earth, a character is astonished to meet a woman who actually owns books, which were normally owned only by churches and monasteries.)
Before legal and economic restrictions on print ownership came into being, one would occasionally find an author’s or archivist’s book curse inscribed in a given volume. Beyond this, however, two major developments in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries seem to have provoked the development of modern copyright. First, the expansion of mercantile trade in major European cities and the appearance of the secular university helped produce an educated bourgeois class interested in the information of the day. This helped spur the emergence of a public sphere, which was increasingly served by entrepreneurial stationers who produced copies of books on demand. Second, Gutenberg’s development of movable type and the development and spread of the printing press made mass reproduction of printed works quick and much cheaper than ever before. Before printing, the process of copying a work could be nearly as labor intensive and expensive as creating the original, and was largely relegated to monastic scribes. It appears that publishers, rather than authors, were the first to seek restrictions on the copying of printed works. Given that publishers of music and films in particular commonly now obtain the copyright from a creator (although rarely a book author) as a condition of mass reproduction of a work, one of the criticisms of the current system is that it benefits publishers more than it does creators. This is one of the chief arguments in favor of peer-to-peer file sharing systems, making an analogy with the changes wrought by printing.
An interesting attempt at copyright in the early modern period was the notice attached to the ha- Shirim asher li-Shelomo , a setting of the Psalms by the composer Salomone Rossi, which happened to be the first music to be printed with a Hebrew type-face text (1623). It included a rabbinical curse on anyone who copied the contents.

Movable type
The printing press brought the possibility of compensation for literary labor. Very speedily, however, the unrestricted rivalry of printers brought into existence competing and unauthorized editions of various works, which diminished prospects of any payment, or even entailed loss, for the authors, editors, and printers of the original issue, and thus discouraged further undertaking. Any person with a press and some skills could use movable type to publish books and other items. Scribes and scriveners were no longer needed.
Protection for the authors and their representatives was sought through special privileges obtained for separate works as issued. According to Elizabeth Armstrong (whom the Curators of the Bodleian Library awarded the Gordon Duff Prize in 1965 for her essay on Printers’ and authors’ privileges in France and the Low Countries in the sixteenth century), “The republic of Venice granted its first privilege for a particular book in 1486. It was a special case, being the history of the city itself, the ‘Rerum venetarum ab urbe condita opus’ of Marcus Antonius Coccius Sabellicus”.[3] “Venice began regularly granting privileges for particular books in 1492. The first, 3 January that year, went to Petrus Franciscus de Ravenna, a teacher of canon law at Padua University, who had devised a system of training the memory, which he embodied in a book entitled “Foenix”. [4]
Most early Italian enactments in regard to literature were framed not so much with reference to the protection of authors as for the purpose of inducing printers (acting as publishers) to undertake certain literary enterprises which were believed to be important to the community. The Republic of Venice, the dukes of Florence, and Leo X and other Popes conceded at different times to certain printers the exclusive privilege of printing for specific terms (rarely exceeding 14 years) editions of classic authors; not so much to secure profits for the printers, but rather to encourage, for the benefit of the community, literary ventures on the part of the editors and printers.
The first copyright privilege in England bears date 1518 and was issued to Richard Pynson, King’s Printer, the successor to William Caxton. The privilege gives a monopoly for the term of two years. The date is 15 years later than that of the first privilege issued in France. Early copyright privileges were called “monopolies,” particularly during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, who frequently gave grants of monopolies in articles of common use, such as salt, leather, coal, soap, cards, beer, and wine. The practice was continued until the Statute of Monopolies was enacted in 1623, ending most monopolies, with certain exceptions, such as patents; after 1623, grants of Letters patent to publishers became common. The period of common-law copyright for Great Britain was brought to a close by the Act of Queen Anne in 1709. The Act had a certain effect in the British Colonies, therefore it is regarded as being the first copyright law that affected the future United States.
The earliest German privilege of which there is trustworthy record was issued in 1501 by the Aulic Council to an association entitled the Sodalitas Rhenana Celtica, for the publication of an edition of the dramas of Hroswitha of Gandersheim, which had been prepared for the press by Konrad Keltes. In 1512 an Imperial privilege was issued to the historiographer John Stadius for all that he should print, the first European privilege which was made to cover more than a single work, or undertaking to protect books not yet published. In 1794 legislation was enacted in the Prussian Parliament which was accepted by the other states of Germany (except Württemberg and Mecklenburg), under which all German authors, and foreign authors whose works were represented by publishers taking part in the book fairs in Frankfurt and Leipzig, were to be protected throughout the states of Germany against unauthorized reprints. This Berlin enactment may be credited as the first step towards a practical recognition of international copyright. Enforcement of the provisions of interstate enactments proved to be difficult, at least until after 1815.[citation needed]

Earliest copyright disputations
One of the earliest copyright disputes reputedly took place in 557 A.D. between Abbot Finnian of Moville and St. Columba over St. Columba’s copying of a Psalter belonging to an Abbot. The dispute over ownership of the copy led to the Battle of Cúl Dreimhne (also know as Battle of Cooldrumman), in which 3,000 men were killed.[5] In 1557, the English monarch, Mary I, chartered a London guild of printers, bookbinders, and booksellers known as the Stationers’ Company, probably in an attempt to prevent the spread of the Protestant Reformation. Only Guild members were allowed to practice the art of printing and the master and wardens of the society were empowered to search, seize, and burn all prohibited books, and to imprison any person found to be printing without a license. In return for their role in preventing the publication of books deemed heretical or seditious, the Guild’s members enjoyed the economic benefits of a monopoly over the printing industry. From 1557 to 1641, the English Crown exercised authority over printing and the Stationers’ Company through the Star Chamber. After the abolition of the Star Chamber in 1641, the English Parliament continued to extend the Stationers’ Company’s censorship/monopoly arrangement through a series of ordinances and Licensing Acts between 1643 and 1692.
During its time, the Stationers’ Company developed a private system for handling disputes between its members (sometimes referred to as a Stationer’s Copyright). Under this system, specific Guild members held monopoly rights in a particular work that were treated as being perpetual. Although Guild members could purchase a manuscript from an author, authors could not become members of the Guild and were not entitled to any royalties or additional payments after purchase. Members were allowed to buy and sell rights over particular works to each other. As a method to keep track of which members claimed rights in what works, the Guild required that copyrights be recorded in a registration book at the Guild’s Hall. The Licensing Act of 1662 also required printers to deposit a copy of each work with the Guild to prevent changes to the work after it was reviewed by censors. Many aspects of the Stationers’ system were later incorporated into modern copyright laws.
Following the English Civil War, which was partly fought over the Crown’s abuse of monopolies, the Stationers’ power was threatened when the last Licensing Act expired in 1694. Without their monopolies, London’s booksellers faced an unregulated influx of cheap texts printed outside Britain, and in Scotland, that began flooding the English market. After years of lobbying Parliament by authors and members of the Conger, the world’s first modern copyright statute was enacted – the Statute of Anne, 8 Anne, ch. 19 (1710).

The birth of modern copyright
England’s Statute of Anne (1710) is widely regarded as the first copyright law. The statute’s full title was “An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by vesting the Copies of Printed Books in the Authors or purchasers of such Copies, during the Times therein mentioned.” This statute first accorded exclusive rights to authors (i.e., creators) rather than publishers, and it included protections for consumers of printed work ensuring that publishers could not control their use after sale. It also limited the duration of such exclusive rights to 28 years, after which all works would pass into the public domain. Although the Statute of Anne created a system of monopoly rights similar in many ways to the Stationers’ Company’s private system, it introduced three major changes.
Unlike previous laws that gave broad monopoly power to the Stationers’ Company, who would then administer a private system of copyright between Guild members, the Statute of Anne directly outlined a public copyright system that applied to the public in general. Second, the Statute recognized a copyright as originating in the author, rather than a Guild member. Lastly, it placed a time limitation on the monopoly enjoyed by holders of a copyright. Specifically, the Act provided that an owner of the copyright in any book already printed should have the exclusive right of publishing it for twenty-one years. For works not yet published, the act provided an exclusive right to publish for fourteen years from the time of first publication, with the stipulation that the right could be extended by an author for another 14 years. However, printers argued that the texts were property owned by the authors, and therefore could be sold as such to the printers, who would then own the rights.
There were territorial loopholes in the 1710 Act. It did not extend to all British territories, but only covered England, Scotland and Wales. Many reprints of British copyright works were consequently issued both in Ireland and in North American colonies, without any license from the copyright holder required. These works were frequently issued without payment to British copyright holders, so they were cheaper than London editions. They were popular with book-buyers, but were not copyright infringements in the formal sense of the word, being within the law. The term was used, however.
In Ireland and North America there were reprint publishers who sought out formal arrangements with and made payments to British copyright holders. This illicit reprint trade was also engaged in by some Scottish publishers. These publishers were sometimes prosecuted.
Irish reprints became a matter of great concern to London publishers. Their reprints undermined direct sales to Ireland. They also crossed the border into England, and were especially sold in English provincial markets which were becoming increasingly important to London publishers. Booksellers who sold these reprints in England, Scotland, and Wales were subject to prosecution.
Between 1710-1774 there was legal debate about what length of time was meant in the 1710 act.
In the 1730s, publishers in Scotland began to reprint titles that they no longer considered to be covered by copyright. Scottish publishers printed what they perceived to be public domain English works whose copyright had expired. They sold these titles in Scotland, and in the English provinces. English publishers objected to this, on the basis of what they saw as common-law rights and property (under the concept of common-law rights in the English system), which predated the Copyright Act. Under common-law rights, rights in published works were held to continue into perpetuity.
The case of Donaldson vs Beckett, in 1774, brought disagreements on the length of copyright to an end. The outcome of the case resulted in the decision that Parliament could, and had, put a limit on copyright length. This decision reflected a shift in English ideas of copyright. The English lords who made the decision in 1774 decided that it was not in the public’s best interest to have London publishers control books in perpetuity, particularly as English publishers commonly kept prices high. There were some notions that this was a cultural or class issue. Works in perpetual copyright were seen to have limited access by some citizens to the cultural history of their own land.
Concepts of the roles of the author and publisher, of copyright law, and of general Enlightenment notions, interacted in this period. Authors had been previously seen to be divinely inspired. Patronage was a legitimate way to support authors, in part because of this. Authors who were paid, rather than entering into patron-relationships, were often regarded as hacks, and looked down upon. However, the notion of individual genius was becoming more common during the 1770s (the generation after Donaldson v Beckett), and being a paid author therefore became more accepted.
In Great Britain’s North American colonies, reprinting British copyright works without permission had long happened episodically, but only became a major feature of colonial life after 1760. It became more commonplace to reprint British works in the colonies (mostly in the 13 American colonies). The impetus for this shift came from Irish and Scottish master printers and booksellers who had moved to the North American colonies in the mid 18th century. They were already familiar with the practice of reprinting and selling British copyright works, and continued the practice in North America, and it became a major part of the North American printing and publishing trade. Robert Bell was an example. He was originally Scottish, and had spent almost a decade in Dublin before he moved to British North America in 1768. His operations, and those of many other colonial printers and booksellers, ensured that the practice of reprinting was well-established by the time of the American Declaration of Independence in 1776. Weakened American ties to Britain coincided with the increase of reprinting outside British copyright controls.
The Irish also made a flourishing business of shipping reprints to North America in the 18th century. Ireland’s ability to reprint freely ended in 1801 when Ireland’s Parliament merged with Great Britain, and the Irish became subject to British copyright laws.
The printing of uncopyrighted English works for the English-language market also occurred in other European countries. The British government responded to this problem in two ways: 1) it amended its own copyright statutes in 1842, explicitly forbidding import of any foreign reprint of British copyrighted work into the UK or its colonies, and 2) it began the process of reciprocal agreements with other countries. The first reciprocal agreement was with Prussia in 1846. The US remained outside this arrangement for some decades. This was objected to by such authors as Dickens and Mark Twain.

The natural rights debate
As the first copyrights under the Statute began to expire, a legal battle erupted over what rights, if any, existed after a copyright term expired. The book publishers argued that a perpetual common law copyright existed beyond the term outlined in the Statute, akin to the situation prior to passage of the Statute. The publishers argued that copyright was a natural right. The first major victory for the book publishers came in the case of Millar v. Taylor. The case involved the poet James Thomson’s book, “The Seasons.” A bookseller, Andrew Millar, purchased the publishing rights to “The Seasons” in 1729. After the copyright’s term expired, Robert Taylor began publishing his own competing publication, which contained Thomson’s poem. The judge assigned to the case sided with the publishers, finding that common law rights were not extinguished by the Statute of Anne. Under Mansfield’s ruling, the publishers had a perpetual common-law right to publish a work for which they had acquired the rights.
The decision in Millar, however, was made by an English court and so did not extend to Scotland, where a reprint industry continued to thrive and a Scottish court rejected the notion of a perpetual common-law copyright in Hinton v. Donaldson. The debate culminated in the landmark case of Donaldson v. Beckett. The decision by the House of Lords in February of 1774 rejected common-law copyright. Lord Camden, attacked the publisher’s foundation for a common-law right:
The arguments attempted to be maintained on the side of the respondents, were founded on patents, privileges, Star Chamber decrees, and the bye (sic) laws of the Stationers’ Company; all of them the effects of the grossest tyranny and usurpation; the very last places in which I should have dreamt of finding the least trace of the common law of this kingdom; and yet, by a variety of subtle reasoning and metaphysical refinements, have they endeavored to squeeze out the spirit of the common law from premises in which it could not possibly have existence.
Although the decision in Donaldson firmly established that, in England, works to which a copyright has expired fall to the public domain, the debate itself has resurfaced in the United States and elsewhere in the years since.

Early internationalisation
The Berne Convention of 1886 first established the recognition of a common copyright amongst several sovereign nations. (International recognition of copyright was also provided by the Universal Copyright Convention of 1952, but that convention is today largely of only historical interest.) Contrary to English tradition, copyright is granted automatically to creative works under the Berne Convention; an author does not have to actively register or otherwise apply for copyright to be applied to the work. As soon as the work is “fixed”, that is, written or recorded on some physical medium (e.g. words written on page, music recorded onto tape, etc.), its author is automatically granted exclusive rights to the distribution of the work and any derivative works unless and until the author explicitly disclaims them, or until the copyright expires.
* Evolution to deal with successive waves of new technology.
* Origins of collecting societies.
* Conflicts (then resounding lack of conflict) over term extensions.

Diversion: copyright and communism
Historically, many societies governed by socialist governments have viewed copyright as a welfare or support mechanism for artists, instead of (or in addition to) a legal right. These ideas probably found their strongest expression in Scandinavian law.
The Eastern European communist states professed to employ socialist principles in rewarding their artists and authors, but the reality of their copyright systems was deeply entangled with censorship and state control of culture. Cultural workers in the Soviet Union did well if they could employ “blat” to their advantage and convince the right party officials to favour their work.
The Soviet Union did have a number of interactions with the international copyright system:
* Unsuccessful lawsuits brought by Western lawyers in an attempt to make the Soviet state recognise foreign copyrights or pay royalties to foreign authors (the USSR did occasionally pay foreign authors for the use of their works, but only if they were of a suitable ideological colour).
* Accession to the Universal Copyright Convention, with the intention of allowing the Soviet state to appropriate international copyright in works by dissident Soviet authors, and thereby control the distribution of those works outside the Communist bloc.

Modern US copyright legislation
* Enactment of the Copyright Act of 1976.
* Enactment of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.
* Enactment of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
* Enactment of the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act.

Recent history: globalization and technological crisis
* Digital technology introduces a new level of controversy into copyright policy.
* Inclusion of software as copyright subject matter on the recommendation of CONTU and then later with the EU Computer Programs Directive.
* Enactment of TRIPS.
* Controversy over the copyrightability of databases (Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service and contradictory cases); links to the debate over sui generis Database rights.
* Enactment of the WIPO Copyright Treaty; nations begin passing anti-circumvention laws.
* Some copyrighted works are more difficult to protect. Music, for example, may be played or sung by anyone after it has been published. But if it is performed for profit, the performers must pay a fee, called a royalty, to the copyright owner. A similar principle applies to performances of plays. As a written work, a play is protected in the same way as a book; anyone who wants to perform it must pay a royalty.

Analysis: recurring themes in the history of copyright
The history of copyright has several key themes: responses to innovations in media technologies, expansions in the definition, scope and operation of copyright, and international dissemination of the evolutions occurring in particular states.

Responses to technological innovation
The genesis of copyright can be seen as a process through which capitalist societies found a way to wed the printing press and the marketplace (see also print culture).
This commercial regulatory system, designed for the printing press, was successively expanded to include photography, phonography, film, broadcasting, photocopying (reprography) and computer programs as those technologies became widespread. These expansions were at first controversial but over time became stable components of commerce in the relevant industries.
The placement of present disputes over copyright in this historical trajectory is an interesting problem. Some commentators would add the Internet and digitised works in general to the end of the above list of technological expansions. In that view, the same functions of copyright (especially creating marketplace incentives for the production of works) remain necessary or desirable for digital material and will therefore eventually become stable and consensual. In contrast, commentators such as Barlow (1994) have argued that digital copyright is fundamentally different and will remain persistently difficult to enforce; others such as Stallman (1996) have argued that the Internet deeply undermines the economic rationale for copyright in the first place. These perspectives may lead to the consideration of alternative compensation systems in place of exclusive rights.

Expansions in scope and operation
* Move from common law and ad-hoc grants of monopoly to copyright statutes.
* Expansions in subject matter (largely related to technology).
* Expansions in duration.
* Creation of new exclusive rights (such as performers’ and other neighbouring rights).
* Creation of collecting societies.
* Criminalisation of copyright infringement.
* Creation of anti-circumvention laws.
* Courts’ application of secondary liability doctrines to cover file sharing networks

Regulatory leadership and internationalisation
* Early role of the UK; reciprocity and the Berne convention; the United States as a “pirate nation.”
* Shift to leadership by the US during the 20th century (though some expansions continued to flow from Europe); the South and the Far East as centres of copyright breaking.
[edit] Notes
1. ^ Martial, The Epigrams, Penguin, 1978, James Mitchie
2. ^ Martial, The Epigrams, Penguin, 1978, James Mitchie
3. ^ Armstrong, Elizabeth. Before Copyright: the French book-privilege system 1498-1526. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 1990, p. 3
4. ^ Armstrong, Elizabeth. Before Copyright: the French book-privilege system 1498-1526. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge: 1990, p. 6
5. ^ Gantz, John and Rochester, Jack B. (2005), Pirates of the Digital Millennium, Upper Saddle River: Financial Times Prentice Hall, p. 30-33; ISBN 0-13-146315-2
[edit] References
1. Eaton S. Drone, A Treatise on the Law of Property in Intellectual Productions, Little, Brown, & Co. (1879).
2. Dietrich A. Loeber, ‘”Socialist” Features of Soviet Copyright Law’, Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, vol. 23, pp 297–313, 1984.
3. Joseph Lowenstein, The Author’s Due : Printing and the Prehistory of Copyright, University of Chicago Press, 2002
4. Christopher May, “The Venetian Moment: New Technologies, Legal Innovation and the Institutional Origins of Intellectual Property”, Prometheus, 20(2), 2002.
5. Millar v. Taylor, 4 Burr. 2303, 98 Eng. Rep. 201 (K.B. 1769).
6. Lyman Ray Patterson, Copyright in Historical Perspective, Vanderbilt University Press, 1968.
7. Brendan Scott, “Copyright in a Frictionless World”, First Monday, volume 6, number 9 (September 2001), http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_9/scott/index.html.
8. Charles Forbes René de Montalembert, The Monks of the West from St Benedict to St Bernard, William Blackwood and Sons, London, 1867, Vol III.
9. Augustine Birrell, Seven Lectures on the Law and History of Copyright in Books, Rothman Reprints Inc., 1899 (1971 reprint).
10. Drahos, P. with Braithwaite, J., Information Feudalism, The New Press, New York, 2003. ISBN 1-56584-804-7(hc.)
11. Paul Edward Geller, International Copyright Law and Practice, Matthew Bender. (2000).
12. New International Encyclopedia
13. Computer Associates International, Inc. v. Altai, Inc., 982 F.2d 693 (2d Cir. 1992)
14. Armstrong, Elizabeth. Before Copyright: the French book-privilege system 1498-1526. Cambridge University Press (Cambridge: 1990)
15. Gantz, John and Rochester, Jack B. (2005), Pirates of the Digital Millennium, Upper Saddle River: Financial Times Prentice Hall; ISBN 0-13-146315-2

Copyright infringement of software

Copyright infringement of software
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The copyright infringement of software (also known as software piracy) refers to several practices which involve the unauthorized copying of computer software. Copyright infringement of this kind is extremely common in the United States, Mexico, China, Indonesia, Russia, Brazil, Zimbabwe and several other parts of the world. Most countries have copyright laws which apply to software, but they are better enforced in some countries than others. Since a dispute over WTO membership between Iran and USA, which led to the legalization in Iran of the distribution of software without the permission of any copyright holder (see Iran and copyright issues), there have been fears that world governments might try to use copyright laws and enforcement politically.
The rate of copyright infringement of software in the Asia-Pacific region has been estimated at 53% for 2004[1] China is the largest producer of pirated products in the world – software is no exception. The Business Software Alliance estimates that in 2006 82% of the PC software used in China was pirated. After joining the World Trade Organization (WTO) China has adjusted its Intellectual Property (IP) laws to comply with the WTO Agreement on Trade – Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The laws are in place but are ignored.[2]

Activities that may constitute infringement
Copyright infringement of software may refer to the following kinds of practices when done without the permission of the copyright holder:
* Creating a copy and/or selling it. This is the act that some people refer to as “software piracy”. This is copyright infringement in most countries and is unlikely to be fair use or fair dealing if the work remains commercially available. In some countries the laws may allow the selling of a version modified for use by blind people, students (for educational product) or similar. Differences in legislation may also make the copyright void in some jurisdictions, but not the others.
* Creating a copy and giving it to someone else. This constitutes copyright infringement in most jurisdictions. It is not infringing under specific circumstances such as fair use and fair dealing.
* Creating a copy to serve as a backup. This is seen as a fundamental right of the software-buyer in some countries, e.g., Germany, Spain, Brazil and Philippines. It can be infringement, depending on the laws and the case law interpretations of those laws, currently undergoing changes in many countries. In the US, legal action was taken against companies which made backup copies while repairing computers (see MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc. (1993)) and as a result, US law was changed so that making temporary backup copies of software while repairing computers is not copyright infringement.
* Renting the original software. Software licenses often never restrict the usual right of a purchaser of a copyrighted work to let others borrow the work. In some jurisdictions the validity of such restrictions are disputed, but some require permission from the copyright holder to allow renting the software.
* Buying the original software. Licenses never say that the buyer does not buy the software but instead pays for the right to use the software. In the US, the first-sale doctrine, Softman v. Adobe [3] and Novell, Inc. v. CPU Distrib., Inc. ruled that software sales are purchases, not licenses, and resale, including unbundling, is lawful regardless of a contractual prohibition. The reasoning in Softman v. Adobe suggests that resale of student licensed versions, provided they are accurately described as such, is also not infringing.
* Bulletin Board Sharing/Internet Piracy- Albacea et al (2005) states that this infringement occurs when System Operators share (by electronic transfer) copyrighted materials on bulletin boards or the internet for users to download.

Existing and proposed laws
To many of these attempts at circumventing these end user license agreements (EULA) software vendors counter that if a user somehow obtains software without agreeing to or becoming bound by the end user license agreement, then they do not have any license to use the software at all.
In most third world countries, the term of a copyright never exceeds any useful life a program may have. The oldest legacy computer systems used today are still less than 40 years old. The copyright on them will not expire in the United States and Europe until about 2030. Changes in computer hardware, operating systems, network environments and user expectations usually make programs obsolete much faster than in 70 years (the current copyright length).
Under the proposed US Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA), a controversial model law that has been adopted in Virginia and Maryland, software manufacturers are granted broad rights to shut down unauthorized software copiers without court intervention similar to some of the provisions found in Title II of the US DMCA, the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, which allows copyright holders to demand that an online service provider (OSP) expeditiously block access to infringing materials. If the OSP complies, it is granted a safe harbor, providing it immunity from infringement claims. If it doesn’t comply, it doesn’t become liable, but may instead rely on the protection of the Communications Decency Act.
Title I of the US DMCA, the WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties Implementation Act has provisions that prevent persons from “circumvent[ing] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work”. Thus if a software manufacturer has some kind of software, dongle or password access device installed in the software any attempt to bypass such a copy prevention scheme may be actionable — though the US Copyright Office is currently reviewing anticircumvention rulemaking under DMCA — anticircumvention exemptions that have been in place under the DMCA include those in software designed to filter websites that are generally seen to be inefficient (child safety and public library website filtering software) and the circumvention of copy prevention mechanisms that have malfunctioned, have caused the software to become inoperable or which are no longer supported by their manufacturers.
Most commercially exploited proprietary software is developed in the United States, Japan and Europe, hence for those located in economically disadvantaged economies it can be prohibitively expensive to pay for all the end user licenses for those products rather than to purchase just one license and then copy the software without paying any additional licensing fees. Some critics in the developing countries of the world see this as an indirect technology transfer tax on their country preventing technological advancement and they use this type of argument when refusing to accept the copyright laws that are in force in most technologically advanced countries. This idea is often applied to patent laws as well.
Mere possession of unauthorized copy could be a ground for an offense depending on provisions of existing laws of a country.

The effects of copyright infringement on digital culture
Peer to peer (P2P) file sharing technologies have lowered the threshold of knowledge needed to acquire massive amounts of information. Large networks have been created which are dedicated to share knowledge, but these same networks can be used to distribute infringing material. Identifying infringing material isn’t always trivial, since the users can modify the name of material being shared.
Software piracy is illegal due to the perceived economic loss it inflicts on the copyright owner. Even if it is assumed that only a portion of those infringing the author’s copyright would ever have bought the software, the author will still suffer an economic loss as a result.
Software authors suggest that copyright infringement negatively affects the economy by decreasing the profits that allow for further development and growth within the software industry. The U.S. is the country most affected, as they provide about 80% of the world’s software.[1] Software counterfeiting is claimed to be a large problem by some, resulting in a revenue loss of US $11-12 billion, China and Vietnam being the biggest offenders [2].
It has been suggested that counterfeit software will decline so much as to be eliminated in the future, but there are measures being taken and rules being put into place to work towards this goal. “In the United States, for example, the level of piracy has been reduced from 48% in 1989 to 25% in 2002.”[4] Rise of quality in free alternative software also helps to lower the use of copied software worldwide. Illegally copying software is seen by some software producers as a “lesser evil” than actually buying or illegally copying a competitor’s software. Jeff Raikes, a Microsoft executive, stated that “If they’re going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else.” He also added [3] that “We understand that in the long run the fundamental asset is the installed base of people who are using our products. What you hope to do over time is convert them to licensing the software.”
Traian Băsescu, the president of Romania, stated that “piracy helped the young generation discover computers. It set off the development of the IT industry in Romania.”[5]

Types of copyright infringement of software
According to the Business Software Alliance, copyright infringement of software takes several forms, which include the following.
“CD-R infringement” is the illegal copying of software using CD-R recording technology.
“Commercial Use of Non-commercial Software” is using educational or other commercial-use-restricted software in violation of the software license is a form of copyright infringement.
“Counterfeiting” is the duplication and sale of unauthorized copies of software in such a manner as to try to pass off the illegal copy as if it were a legitimate copy produced or authorized by the legal publisher. This is also often a violation of trademark laws.
“Hard-disk loading” occurs when an individual or company sells computers preloaded with illegal copies of software.
“Internet infringement” is the illegal uploading of software on to the Internet for anyone to copy.
“OEM infringement/unbundling” is known as OEM (original equipment manufacturer) software, is only legally sold with specified hardware. Whether misappropriating OEM software constitutes copyright infringement is subject to interpretation – a software publisher would have a difficult time prosecuting a person who has successfully purchased a genuine OEM copy but who, according to the license agreement, would have been supposed to purchase a retail copy. This is because a court must also consider laws relating to the commercial sales of goods such as the Uniform Commercial Code in the United States, which are more established in law and which can be interpreted to prohibit or nullify licensing terms that negate the established nature of a common sale transaction.
“Softlifting” is a neologism invented by anti-copyright infringement advocates, and is a term used to describe when a person purchases a single licensed copy of a software program and loads it on several machines, in violation of the terms of the license agreement.
“Unrestricted client access infringement” occurs when a copy of a software program is copied onto an organization’s servers and the organization’s network “clients” are allowed to freely access the software in violation of the terms of the license agreement.

Objections to the term “piracy”
Copyright Infringement has been called piracy since at least 1703. In the forward to Daniel Defoe’s corrected edition of The True-Born Englishman, the author makes reference to “pirates and paragraph men” who distributed copies of his poem on the streets. [6] Some modern groups object to the term “software piracy”, however, believing that such a term unfairly equates copyright violators with murderers and thieves. Evidence of this can be seen in the Free Software Foundation’s list of confusing words [7]

Types of Software Piracy
Industrial piracy
An individual or group attempts duplication and distribution on a large scale for profit.
Corporate piracy
Unprotected contents are shared through networks such as peer-to-peer, LAN and Internet.
Reseller piracy
Involves computer hardware companies selling machines with illegal copies of software preloaded on their hard drive.
Home piracy
Includes everything from trading disks with friends to running a not-for-profit bulletin board for the purpose of illegal software distribution.
[edit] Impact on Workplaces
According to the journal published by Frederick Gallegos[citation needed], they found that 90% of business employees believed that their colleagues copied software illegally.[citation needed] They also found that over 50% of managers indicated that they had committed software piracy.[citation needed] Males copied software illegally more frequently than females and younger students were more likely to pirate software than older students.[citation needed]

References
1. International Journal of Research in Marketing, December 2003 (Volume 20, No. 4), “How many pirates should a software firm tolerate?”
2. Journal of Business, 2004, (Volume 77, No. 2),“Software Piracy: Market penetration in the Presence of Network Externalities”
3. Albacea, E., Payongayong M. T. and A. Pinpin (2005) Computer Ethics.UPOU Los Baños Philippines. p 78.
4. G.Frederick, (2007) Software Piracy: Some Facts, Figures, and Issues.
1. ^ BSA – 2007 Global Piracy Study
2. ^ http://w3.bsa.org/globalstudy//upload/2005-2006%20Global%20Piracy%20Study.pdf:U.S. – China Economic and Security Review Commission June 8, 2006. Hearings USCC.gov http://www.uscc.gov/hearings/20006hearings/written_testimonies/06_06_08wrts/06_06_7_8_chow_daniel.php
3. ^ Softman-V-Adobe Linux Journal
4. ^ Software and Information Industry Association page on Piracy
5. ^ Nathan Davis. Thanks for letting us pirate. 5 February 2007.
6. ^ Ken Hunt, Dont’ Fear The Pirates,Toronto Globe & Mail, Nov. 27, 2007
7. ^ http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html].

Phishing

Phishing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An example of a phishing e-mail, disguised as an official e-mail from a (fictional) bank. The sender is attempting to trick the recipient into revealing secure information by “confirming” it at the phisher’s website.
An example of a phishing e-mail, disguised as an official e-mail from a (fictional) bank. The sender is attempting to trick the recipient into revealing secure information by “confirming” it at the phisher’s website.
In computing, phishing is the process of attempting to criminally and fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. PayPal, eBay and online banks are common targets. Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging,[1] and often directs users to enter details at a website. Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques used to fool users.[2] Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, public awareness, and technical security measures.
A phishing technique was described in detail as early as 1987, while the first recorded use of the term “phishing” was made in 1996. The term is a variant of fishing,[3] probably influenced by phreaking,[4][5] and alludes to the use of increasingly sophisticated baits used in the hope of a “catch” of financial information and passwords.

History and current status of phishing
A phishing technique was described in detail as early as 1987, in a paper and presentation delivered to the International HP Users Group, Interex.[6] The first recorded mention of the term “phishing” is on the alt.online-service.America-online Usenet newsgroup on January 2, 1996,[7] although the term may have appeared earlier in the print edition of the hacker magazine 2600.[8]
Early phishing on AOL
Phishing on AOL was closely associated with the warez community that exchanged pirated software. Those who would later phish on AOL during the 1990s originally used fake, algorithmically generated credit card numbers to create accounts on AOL, which could last weeks or possibly months. After AOL brought in measures in late 1995 to prevent this, early AOL crackers resorted to phishing for legitimate accounts.[9]
A phisher might pose as an AOL staff member and send an instant message to a potential victim, asking him to reveal his password.[10] In order to lure the victim into giving up sensitive information the message might include imperatives like “verify your account” or “confirm billing information”. Once the victim had revealed the password, the attacker could access and use the victim’s account for criminal purposes, such as spamming. Both phishing and warezing on AOL generally required custom-written programs, such as AOHell. Phishing became so prevalent on AOL that they added a line on all instant messages stating: “no one working at AOL will ask for your password or billing information”.
After 1997, AOL’s policy enforcement with respect to phishing and warez became stricter and forced pirated software off AOL servers. AOL simultaneously developed a system to promptly deactivate accounts involved in phishing, often before the victims could respond. The shutting down of the warez scene on AOL caused most phishers to leave the service, and many phishers—often young teens—grew out of the habit.[11]
Transition from AOL to financial institutions
The capture of AOL account information may have led phishers to misuse credit card information, and to the realization that attacks against online payment systems were feasible. The first known direct attempt against a payment system affected E-gold in June 2001, which was followed up by a “post-911 id check” shortly after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.[12] Both were viewed at the time as failures, but can now be seen as early experiments towards more fruitful attacks against mainstream banks. By 2004, phishing was recognized as a fully industrialized part of the economy of crime: specializations emerged on a global scale that provided components for cash, which were assembled into finished attacks.[13][14]

Recent phishing attempts
More recent phishing attempts have targeted the customers of banks and online payment services. E-mails, supposedly from the Internal Revenue Service, have also been used to glean sensitive data from U.S. taxpayers.[15] While the first such examples were sent indiscriminately in the expectation that some would be received by customers of a given bank or service, recent research has shown that phishers may in principle be able to determine which banks potential victims use, and target bogus e-mails accordingly.[16] Targeted versions of phishing have been termed spear phishing.[17] Several recent phishing attacks have been directed specifically at senior executives and other high profile targets within businesses, and the term whaling has been coined for these kinds of attacks.[18]
Social networking sites are also a target of phishing, since the personal details in such sites can be used in identity theft;[19] in late 2006 a computer worm took over pages on MySpace and altered links to direct surfers to websites designed to steal login details.[20] Experiments show a success rate of over 70% for phishing attacks on social networks.[21]
Almost half of phishing thefts in 2006 were committed by groups operating through the Russian Business Network based in St. Petersburg.[22]


Phishing techniques
Link manipulation
Most methods of phishing use some form of technical deception designed to make a link in an e-mail (and the spoofed website it leads to) appear to belong to the spoofed organization. Misspelled URLs or the use of subdomains are common tricks used by phishers, such as this example URL, http://www.yourbank.example.com/. Another common trick is to make the anchor text for a link appear to be valid, when the link actually goes to the phishers’ site, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genuine.
An old method of spoofing used links containing the ‘@’ symbol, originally intended as a way to include a username and password (contrary to the standard).[23] For example, the link http://www.google.com@members.tripod.com/ might deceive a casual observer into believing that it will open a page on www.google.com, whereas it actually directs the browser to a page on members.tripod.com, using a username of www.google.com: the page opens normally, regardless of the username supplied. Such URLs were disabled in Internet Explorer,[24] while Mozilla[25] and Opera present a warning message and give the option of continuing to the site or cancelling.
A further problem with URLs has been found in the handling of Internationalized domain names (IDN) in web browsers, that might allow visually identical web addresses to lead to different, possibly malicious, websites. Despite the publicity surrounding the flaw, known as IDN spoofing[26] or a homograph attack,[27] no known phishing attacks have yet taken advantage of it.[citation needed] Phishers have taken advantage of a similar risk, using open URL redirectors on the websites of trusted organizations to disguise malicious URLs with a trusted domain.[28][29][30]


Filter evasion
Phishers have used images instead of text to make it harder for anti-phishing filters to detect text commonly used in phishing e-mails.[31]

Website forgery
Once the victim visits the website the deception is not over.[32] Some phishing scams use JavaScript commands in order to alter the address bar. This is done either by placing a picture of a legitimate URL over the address bar, or by closing the original address bar and opening a new one with the legitimate URL.[33]
An attacker can even use flaws in a trusted website’s own scripts against the victim.[34] These types of attacks (known as cross-site scripting) are particularly problematic, because they direct the user to sign in at their bank or service’s own web page, where everything from the web address to the security certificates appears correct. In reality, the link to the website is crafted to carry out the attack, although it is very difficult to spot without specialist knowledge. Just such a flaw was used in 2006 against PayPal.[35]
A Universal Man-in-the-middle Phishing Kit, discovered by RSA Security, provides a simple-to-use interface that allows a phisher to convincingly reproduce websites and capture log-in details entered at the fake site.[36]
To avoid anti-phishing techniques that scan websites for phishing-related text, phishers have begun to use Flash-based websites. These look much like the real website, but hide the text in a multimedia object.[37]

Phone phishing
Not all phishing attacks require a fake website. Messages that claimed to be from a bank told users to dial a phone number regarding problems with their bank accounts.[38] Once the phone number (owned by the phisher, and provided by a Voice over IP service) was dialed, prompts told users to enter their account numbers and PIN. Vishing (voice phishing) sometimes uses fake caller-ID data to give the appearance that calls come from a trusted organization.[39]


Phishing examples
PayPal phishing example
In an example PayPal phish (right), spelling mistakes in the e-mail and the presence of an IP address in the link (visible in the tooltip under the yellow box) are both clues that this is a phishing attempt. Another giveaway is the lack of a personal greeting, although the presence of personal details would not be a guarantee of legitimacy. Other signs that the message is a fraud are misspellings of simple words and the threat of consequences such as account suspension if the recipient fails to comply with the message’s requests.
Damage caused by phishing
The damage caused by phishing ranges from denial of access to e-mail to substantial financial loss. This style of identity theft is becoming more popular, because of the readiness with which unsuspecting people often divulge personal information to phishers, including credit card numbers, social security numbers, and mothers’ maiden names. There are also fears that identity thieves can add such information to the knowledge they gain simply by accessing public records.[40] Once this information is acquired, the phishers may use a person’s details to create fake accounts in a victim’s name. They can then ruin the victims’ credit, or even deny the victims access to their own accounts.[41]
It is estimated that between May 2004 and May 2005, approximately 1.2 million computer users in the United States suffered losses caused by phishing, totaling approximately US$929 million. United States businesses lose an estimated US$2 billion per year as their clients become victims.[42] In 2007 phishing attacks escalated. 3.6 million adults lost US $ 3.2 billion in the 12 months ending in August 2007.[43] In the United Kingdom losses from web banking fraud—mostly from phishing—almost doubled to £23.2m in 2005, from £12.2m in 2004,[44] while 1 in 20 computer users claimed to have lost out to phishing in 2005.[45]
The stance adopted by the UK banking body APACS is that “customers must also take sensible precautions … so that they are not vulnerable to the criminal.”[46] Similarly, when the first spate of phishing attacks hit the Irish Republic’s banking sector in September 2006, the Bank of Ireland initially refused to cover losses suffered by its customers (and it still insists that its policy is not to do so[47]), although losses to the tune of €11300 were made good.[48]
Anti-phishing
There are several different techniques to combat phishing, including legislation and technology created specifically to protect against phishing.


Social responses
One strategy for combating phishing is to train people to recognize phishing attempts, and to deal with them. Education can be effective, especially where training provides direct feedback.[49] One newer phishing tactic, which uses phishing e-mails targeted at a specific company, known as spear phishing, has been harnessed to train individuals at various locations, including West Point Military Academy. In a June 2004 experiment with spear phishing, 80% of 500 West Point cadets who were sent a fake e-mail were tricked into revealing personal information.[50]
People can take steps to avoid phishing attempts by slightly modifying their browsing habits. When contacted about an account needing to be “verified” (or any other topic used by phishers), it is a sensible precaution to contact the company from which the e-mail apparently originates to check that the e-mail is legitimate. Alternatively, the address that the individual knows is the company’s genuine website can be typed into the address bar of the browser, rather than trusting any hyperlinks in the suspected phishing message.[51]
Nearly all legitimate e-mail messages from companies to their customers contain an item of information that is not readily available to phishers. Some companies, for example PayPal, always address their customers by their username in e-mails, so if an e-mail addresses the recipient in a generic fashion (“Dear PayPal customer”) it is likely to be an attempt at phishing.[52] E-mails from banks and credit card companies often include partial account numbers. However, recent research[53] has shown that the public do not typically distinguish between the first few digits and the last few digits of an account number—a significant problem since the first few digits are often the same for all clients of a financial institution. People can be trained to have their suspicion aroused if the message does not contain any specific personal information. Phishing attempts in early 2006, however, used personalized information, which makes it unsafe to assume that the presence of personal information alone guarantees that a message is legitimate.[54] Furthermore, another recent study concluded in part that the presence of personal information does not significantly affect the success rate of phishing attacks,[55] which suggests that most people do not pay attention to such details.
The Anti-Phishing Working Group, an industry and law enforcement association, has suggested that conventional phishing techniques could become obsolete in the future as people are increasingly aware of the social engineering techniques used by phishers.[56] They predict that pharming and other uses of malware will become more common tools for stealing information.
Technical responses
Anti-phishing measures have been implemented as features embedded in browsers, as extensions or toolbars for browsers, and as part of website login procedures. The following are some of the main approaches to the problem.
Helping to identify legitimate sites
Since phishing is based on impersonation, preventing it depends on some reliable way to determine a website’s real identity. For example, some anti-phishing toolbars display the domain name for the visited website.[57] The petname extension for Firefox lets users type in their own labels for websites, so they can later recognize when they have returned to the site. If the site is suspect, then the software may either warn the user or block the site outright.
Browsers alerting users to fraudulent websites
Another popular approach to fighting phishing is to maintain a list of known phishing sites and to check websites against the list. Microsoft’s IE7 browser, Mozilla Firefox 2.0, and Opera all contain this type of anti-phishing measure.[58][59][60] Firefox 2 uses Google anti-phishing software. Opera 9.1 uses live blacklists from PhishTank and GeoTrust, as well as live whitelists from GeoTrust. Some implementations of this approach send the visited URLs to a central service to be checked, which has raised concerns about privacy.[61] According to a report by Mozilla in late 2006, Firefox 2 was found to be more effective than Internet Explorer 7 at detecting fraudulent sites in a study by an independent software testing company.[62]
An approach introduced in mid-2006 involves switching to a special DNS service that filters out known phishing domains: this will work with any browser,[63] and is similar in principle to using a hosts file to block web adverts.
To mitigate the problem of phishing sites impersonating a victim site by embedding its images (such as logos), several site owners have altered the images to send a message to the visitor that a site may be fraudulent. The image may be moved to a new filename and the original permanently replaced, or a server can detect that the image was not requested as part of normal browsing, and instead send a warning image.[64][65]
Augmenting password logins
The Bank of America’s website[66][67] is one of several that ask users to select a personal image, and display this user-selected image with any forms that request a password. Users of the bank’s online services are instructed to enter a password only when they see the image they selected. However, a recent study suggests few users refrain from entering their password when images are absent.[68][69] In addition, this feature (like other forms of two-factor authentication) is susceptible to other attacks, such as those suffered by Scandinavian bank Nordea in late 2005,[70] and Citibank in 2006.[71]
Security skins[72][73] are a related technique that involves overlaying a user-selected image onto the login form as a visual cue that the form is legitimate. Unlike the website-based image schemes, however, the image itself is shared only between the user and the browser, and not between the user and the website. The scheme also relies on a mutual authentication protocol, which makes it less vulnerable to attacks that affect user-only authentication schemes.
A method to prevent simple phishing of transaction numbers (TANs) is to associate each TAN with a “lock number”[citation needed]. The bank’s server sends the lock number as a challenge, and the user provides the corresponding TAN as the response. The server selects the key-lock pair randomly from the list to prevent acquiring two consecutive TANs. Lock numbers are not sequential, so that phishers can only guess correct lock numbers.
Eliminating phishing mail
Specialized spam filters can reduce the number of phishing e-mails that reach their addressees’ inboxes. These approaches rely on machine learning and natural language processing approaches to classify phishing e-mails.[74][75]
Monitoring and takedown
Several companies offer banks and other organizations likely to suffer from phishing scams round-the-clock services to monitor, analyze and assist in shutting down phishing websites.[76] Individuals can contribute by reporting phishing to both volunteer and industry groups,[77] such as PhishTank.[78]


Legal responses
Globe icon
On January 26, 2004, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed the first lawsuit against a suspected phisher. The defendant, a Californian teenager, allegedly created a webpage designed to look like the America Online website, and used it to steal credit card information.[79] Other countries have followed this lead by tracing and arresting phishers. A phishing kingpin, Valdir Paulo de Almeida, was arrested in Brazil for leading one of the largest phishing crime rings, which in two years stole between US$18 million and US$37 million.[80] UK authorities jailed two men in June 2005 for their role in a phishing scam,[81] in a case connected to the U.S. Secret Service Operation Firewall, which targeted notorious “carder” websites.[82] In 2006 eight people were arrested by Japanese police on suspicion of phishing fraud by creating bogus Yahoo Japan Web sites, netting themselves 100 million yen ($870,000 USD).[83] The arrests continued in 2006 with the FBI Operation Cardkeeper detaining a gang of sixteen in the U.S. and Europe.[84]
In the United States, Senator Patrick Leahy introduced the Anti-Phishing Act of 2005 on March 1, 2005. The federal anti-phishing bill proposes that criminals who create fake web sites and send bogus e-mails in order to defraud consumers could be fined up to $250,000 and be jailed for up to five years.[85] The UK strengthened its legal arsenal against phishing with the Fraud Act 2006,[86] which introduces a general offence of fraud that can carry up to a ten year prison sentence, and prohibits the development or possession of phishing kits with intent to commit fraud.[87]
Companies have also joined the effort to crack down on phishing. On March 31, 2005, Microsoft filed 117 federal lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. The lawsuits accuse “John Doe” defendants of obtaining passwords and confidential information. March 2005 also saw a partnership between Microsoft and the Australian government teaching law enforcement officials how to combat various cyber crimes, including phishing.[88] Microsoft announced a planned further 100 lawsuits outside the U.S. in March 2006,[89] followed by the commencement, as of November 2006, of 129 lawsuits mixing criminal and civil actions.[90] AOL reinforced its efforts against phishing[91] in early 2006 with three lawsuits[92] seeking a total of $18 million USD under the 2005 amendments to the Virginia Computer Crimes Act,[93][94] and Earthlink has joined in by helping to identify six men subsequently charged with phishing fraud in Connecticut.[95]
In January 2007, Jeffrey Brett Goodin of California became the first defendant convicted by a jury under the provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. He was found guilty of sending thousands of e-mails to America Online users, while posing as AOL’s billing department, which prompted customers to submit personal and credit card information. Facing a possible 101 years in prison for the CAN-SPAM violation and ten other counts including wire fraud, the unauthorized use of credit cards, and the misuse of AOL’s trademark, he was sentenced to serve 70 months. Goodin had been in custody since failing to appear for an earlier court hearing and began serving his prison term immediately.[96][97][98][99]

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