I would disagree that the law has given up on the Internet, in the light of
THIS:
Quote:
NORFOLK, Va. — A California man pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiring to willfully reproduce and distribute tens of thousands of infringing copies of copyrighted works without permission, including infringing copies of movies before they were commercially released on DVD.
The case was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI).
Sean M. Lovelady, 28, of Pomona, Calif., pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. He faces up to five years in prison, a fine of $250,000 and three years of supervised release.
Lovelady was indicted April 18 along with three other leading members of the IMAGiNE Group, an organized online piracy group seeking to become the premier group to first release Internet copies of new movies only showing in theaters.
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These are aren't the only guys looking at federal time.
Quote:
Two founders of movie download site NinjaVideo.net have pleaded guilty to charges related to copyright infringement, the U.S. Department of Justice said.Hana Beshara, 29, of Las Vegas, pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiracy and criminal copyright infringement in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Last Friday, Matthew David Howard Smith, 23, of Raleigh, North Carolina, pleaded guilty to the same charges in the same court.
Beshara and Smith were among five alleged founders of the website indicted on six counts by a grand jury in Virginia earlier in September. Both face five years in prison on each count they pleaded to.
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LINK
At this point, four out of the five Ninjavideo defendants have now pled guilty and are going to jail. Then there's Megaupload.
Clearly, the DOJ hasn't given up on bringing the rule of law to the Internet, despite all these oh-so-complicated technological issues. I'm sure that the defendants in those cases thought that their clever schemes were too fancy for law enforcement-right up to the time that the handcuffs clicked shut in their wrists.
Does the law has some catching up to do? Sure. The Obama Administration says that more legislation is needed in order to root out the worst foreign pirate sites. Once such legislation is passed, you will see the DOJ go after such pirate sites AND spam sites AND spoofing sites (The same type guys tend to be behind all those kinds of sites).