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The Piracy "Industry" |
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Until recent years, the problem of piracy (the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of copyrighted works (for commercial purposes)) was largely confined to the copying and physical distribution of tapes, disks and CDs. Yet the emergence and increased use of global data networks and the WWW has added a new dimension to the piracy of  intellectual property by permitting still easier copying, electronic sales and transmissions of illegally reproduced copyrighted works on a grand scale.
This new development, often referred to as Internet piracy, broadly relates to the use of global data networks to 1) transmit and download digitized copies of pirated works, 2) advertise and market pirated intellectual property that is delivered on physical media through the mails or other traditional means, and 3) offer and transmit codes or other technologies which can be used to circumvent copy-protection security measures.
Lately the International Intellectual Property Alliance has published a new report on the estimated trade losses due to piracy. (The IIPA assumes that their report actually underestimates the loss of income due to the unlawful copying and distribution of copyrighted works. Yet it should be taken into consideration that the IIPA is the representative of the U.S. core copyright industries (business software, films, videos, music, sound recordings, books and journals, and interactive entertainment software).)
Table: IIPA 1998 - 1999 Estimated Trade Loss due to Copyright Piracy (in millions of US$)
| Motion Pictures
| Records & Music
| Business Applications
| Entertainment Software
| Books
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| 1999
| 1998
| 1999
| 1998
| 1999
| 1998
| 1999
| 1998
| 1999
| 1998
| Total Losses
| 1323
| 1421
| 1684
| 1613
| 3211
| 3437
| 3020
| 2952
| 673
| 619
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Total Losses (core copyright industries)
| 1999
| 1998
| 9910.0
| 10041.5
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Vinton Cerf
Addressed as one of the fathers of the Internet, Vinton Cerf together with Robert Kahn developed the TCP/IP protocol suite, up to now the de facto-communication standard for the Internet, and also contributed to the development of other important communication standards. The early work on the protocols broke new ground with the realization of a multi-network open architecture.
In 1992, he co-founded the  Internet Society where he served as its first President and later Chairman.
Today, Vinton Cerf is Senior Vice President for Internet Architecture and Technology at WorldCom, one of the world's most important ICT companies
Vinton Cerf's web site: http://www.wcom.com/about_the_company/cerfs_up/
 http://www.isoc.org/
http://www.wcom.com/
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