We've had a couple meetings with IP enforcement officials from Europe (Italy and Spain, that is). Their "beat" largely consists of pursuing for-profit counterfeiting operations, as well as digital piracy. A couple observations from these meetings; the Spanish officials noted that violations involving physical counterfeiting operations involving CD's or DVD's were decreasing while purely virtual operations were increasing, as consumers turned more to online sources for pirated material.

They also noted that local network providers saw consumers downloading 24 hours a day simply as a business opportunity, regardless of what was being downloaded. (Note to self--can only hope that free-riding is not the "killer app" that will speed the spread of broadband). The EU directive requiring networks to store information about downloads has been implemented in Spain in such a way as to set a maximum time for storing information, but no minimum, so the information is generally wiped immediately.

Finally, both the Spanish and Italian officials noted a strong link between piracy and financing for organized crime.

posted by Solveig Singleton @ 8:43 AM | International

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