The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released a report claiming that the lawsuits brought on by the RIAA are not effective in lowering the usage of P2P file sharing networks. (PDF)

Are the lawsuits working? Has the arbitrary singling out of more than 20,000 random American families done any good in restoring public respect for copyright law? Have the lawsuits put the P2P genie back in the bottle or restored the record industry to its 1997 revenues?

After four years of threats and litigation, the answer is a resounding no.

Utilizing figures from P2P monitor service Big Champagne, the EFF study states that the amount of P2P file sharing users has continued to increase despite the threat of lawsuits.  In September 2003, when the lawsuits began, there were 4,319,182 users of P2P networks.  In June 2005, there were 8,888,436 users. Currently, there is an estimated 9.35 million users. 

In addition, an estimated 15 million U.S. households downloaded from P2P networks in 2006.

For more information on this issue, please visit our Counterfeit and Piracy page.

The Guardian reports on how Japanese Organized Crime syndicates are expanding their business opportunities.

According to senior police officials, the yakuza is targeting the stock market and the construction industry to add to the earnings it already receives from illegal businesses such as prostitution, drug smuggling, extortion and gambling.

The article states that the yakuza is being forced to expand its “fundraising” opportunities due to a crackdown by law enforcement in Japan.

Japan’s underworld has been forced to diversify by economic instability and a 1992 anti-gang law that made yakuza dons legally culpable for crimes committed by their followers. Police are also cracking down on individual gangsters who collect protection money from bars and restaurants, a traditional source of yakuza income.

[FP Passport]

As the policies of Venezuela President Hugo Chavez continues to create a black market, some currency traders has taken the opportunity to capitalize on it.

According to the Wall Street Journal, some citizens are profiting from the price difference between the bolivar and the dollar.

First, the reason for the black market:

Since 2003, Mr. Chávez has more than doubled government spending on free medical care, higher salaries, gasoline subsidies and other services. That created more demand for goods and services, which fueled inflation. In response, Mr. Chávez expanded price controls, which now cover meat, sugar, eggs, milk and other products. That led to food shortages as producers balked at selling their goods at the mandated prices. The shortages produced a black market, where prices have soared.

With the official exchange rate of 2,150 bolivars to $1,  and a black market rate of 4,800 to $1, savvy traders are able to profit on the price differential.

Wealthier Venezuelans have discovered they can use credit cards to exploit the difference between official and black-market currency rates. Some have flown to the nearby island of Aruba and bought $5,000 worth of gambling chips, the maximum overseas credit purchase allowed by the Venezuelan government, according to a person who arranges the trips. They cash in the chips for dollars, then, back at home, buy enough bolívars on the black market to pay off the credit-card debt, this person says. They pocket the rest — around $2,300 at current rates, more than enough to pay for the trip.

The Guardian (UK) had an exclusive interview this weekend with the  guys who run The Pirate Bay, the world’s largest bittorrent tracker.

The Pirate Bay has been able to evade the reach of Hollywood due to the fact that the website operates in a similar fashion to a search engine.

Filesharing and illegal downloading has been a big issue for media companies since the late 1990s. But while pioneering services such as Napster and Kazaa were closed down by the courts, the campaign against The Pirate Bay has failed to make a breakthrough.

The crux of the defence is that The Pirate Bay operates like any internet search engine: it points to downloads, rather than hosting any illegal content itself. Under Swedish law this has so far made it immune to prosecution.

For more information, please visit our Counterfeit and Piracy page.

The International Justice Mission has stated that one out of every four victims of forced labor or sexual exploitation is Filipino.

According to the Manila Standard:

One in every four victims of forced labor or sexual exploitation is a Filipino.

This was revealed yesterday by the International Justice Mission in the Philippines, quoting a United Nations report on human trafficking.

The mission said that around 2.5 million people are trafficked worldwide and slavery is a booming international trade worth $32 billion.

Lawyer Nina Patricia Sison Arroyo, executive director, said that about 500,000 Filipino children and women annually fall victims to human trafficking.

Foreign businesses lose an estimated $500 million to piracy in India every year, according to BBC News.

The counterfeit market is in full display at traffic intersections in cities across India.

Barefooted lads aged between 10 and 20 dodge oncoming traffic, carrying stacks of counterfeit books to sell to passengers.

One of the counterfeit booksellers is 12-year-old Akash.

He hid his face behind a fake copy of Khaled Hosseini’s latest novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, to avoid being recognised by family and friends.

He is well aware that the books he is selling are illegal, even going so far as to say that I could get a much cheaper bargain if I bought a whole lot all together.

Custom officials released counterfeit goods seizures at the nations ports for the first half of the Fiscal Year.  Nationally, seizures of counterfeit goods rose by 22 percent, with the estimated value of the goods rising by 141 percent.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Nationwide, Customs officials reported 7,245 counterfeit and piracy cases between October and March of 2007, compared to 5,940 cases for the same period in 2006. The estimated sales value of the bogus goods rose to $110.2 million from $45.7 million.

81 percent of goods seized came from China, up from 75 percent last year.

The largest counterfeit goods seized was shoes, accounting for 36 percent of all seized items.

Please visit our Counterfeit and Piracy page for more information on this market.

One in four people surveyed by the Gallop Organization and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles knowingly bought, copied, or downloaded illegal goods in 2006.

The 25% piracy rate of Los Angeles County residents surveyed in May and June was slightly higher than the 20% nationwide rate the chamber found last year.

Not surprisingly, most of the counterfeit purchases were movies and music CDs, followed by brand name clothing, bags and footwear, and consumer goods such as shampoo, computer software, auto parts, video games and even bottled water.

Earlier in the year, the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. released a study claiming that the Southern California region loses an estimated $5.2 billion to counterfeit and piracy activities(pdf).

See more market values at our Counterfeit and Piracy page.

USA Today has an interesting article on the case of Hisayoshi Kojima, a self proclaimed “Indiana Jones of Butterfly Smuggling”:

From Jamaica he could get the giant swallowtail Papilio homerus, whose velvety black and gold wings are depicted on the country’s $1,000 bank note.

From the Philippines he could get the Luzon peacock swallowtail or Papilio chikae.

And from Papua New Guinea he could get what many dealers had never even seen: the prized Queen Alexandra’s birdwing.

All are endangered, protected by international and U.S. wildlife laws. It is illegal to catch, kill or import them.

Kojima always found a way.

The article explains how an agent from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service went undercover to create a case against Kojima. Based on records of all of the species that was offered to the agent, the article states that the black market value of “everything, sold and offered, amounted to as much as $294,000.”

As college students in America head back to school, we thought it might be a good time to list the top ten schools downloading schools in the United States.

The figures are based on notice of violation letters sent by the Recording Industry Association of America. The figures were based during the time period of September 2006 to mid-February 2007.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, here are the top ten schools:

1. Ohio University

2. Purdue University

3. University of Nebraska, Lincoln

4. University of Tennessee, Knoxville

5. University of South Carolina

6. University of Massachusetts at Amherst

7. Michigan State University

8. Howard University

9. North Carolina State University

10. University of Wisconsin, Madison

For more on this issue, please visit our Music Piracy page.