Combating Online Piracy and Copyright Infringement

Counterfeiting and piracy have been problems since the industrial revolution, when market capitalism took hold of the world. These problems often occur across borders, and embody a variety of complex issues from extradition between nations to military enforcement of international laws. These issues have made it hard for enforcement efforts and prosecution to be successful. With the advent of the internet, counterfeiting and piracy have been able to move online and more effectively escape regulations and laws. In the present day the United Nations is seeking to create an international body to fight the intellectual-property violations involved in counterfeiting and piracy, through the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. While ACTA proposes a solution to the problem of online piracy, it tends to treat enforcement online the same as enforcement offline, which is condemned to be ineffective. I argue that the United States should rescind its signature and refuse to ratify the treaty and instead pursue other avenues for multilateral counterfeiting and piracy prevention.

Fighting counterfeit goods through intellectual property law has recently become a common theme in American law enforcement. While an estimate for the total damages caused by undetected intellectual property violations is unknowable, the total damage caused by only cases of intellectual property violations that are discovered is staggering. Intellectual property violations hurt American jobs, cost the American government and people money, and hurt our standing as an international hegemon. The domestic value of intellectual property seizures in 2010 of critical technology goods alone was over 145 Million USD(US Intellectual 6). In June and July of 2010 the...

... middle of paper ...

...ICACIONES O ACTA, POR SUS SIGLAS EN INGLÉS (ANTI-COUNTERFEITING TRADE AGREEMENT). By Carlos S. Garcia. Mexican Government, 30 Sept. 2010. Web. . Translated from Spanish by the Chrome Web Browser.

Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act, S. 968, 112th Cong. (2011). Print.

Ruse-Khan, Henning G. "From TRIPS to ACTA: Towards a New 'Gold Standard' in Criminal IP Enforcement?" Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property and Competition Law 6th ser. 10 (2010). SSRN. Web.

Stevenson, Alastair. "Acta: One Million Sign Protest Petition against Trade Agreement". The International Business Times. (30 January 2012)

United States Trade Representative. Remarks by U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab

Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). 23 Oct. 2007. Web.