File trading may fund terrorism

WASHINGTON -- A congressional hearing on the links between terrorism, organized crime, and the illegal trading of copyrighted material produced more complaints about college students using peer-to-peer (P-to-P) networks and other governments sanctioning copyright violations than it did evidence of nefarious connections.

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Witnesses and representatives at the U.S. House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property hearing Thursday did express fears that profits from widespread copying of movies, music and software outside the U.S. were being funneled into terrorist organizations, but the hearing produced no concrete examples of that happening.

John G. Malcolm, deputy assistant attorney general in the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice did say there seems to be some connection between illegal copying and organized crime, in that many of the groups profiting from illegal copies are highly organized and can have international distribution networks. Organized crime often supports terrorism, he suggested.

"These groups will not hesitate to threaten or injure those who tend to interfere with their operations," Malcolm said.

But when subcommittee chairman Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, asked Malcolm for examples of cases where file trading was connected to terrorism, Malcolm said he couldn't give concrete examples. "It would surprise me greatly if the number were not large," Malcolm added. "This is an easy enterprise to get into; the barriers of entry are very small, and the profits are huge."

Smith and several others at the hearing noted that selling illegally copied materials can be more lucrative than selling illegal drugs, and several at the hearing compared the copyrighted materials trade to the drug trade. Illegally copied materials can have markups of 900 percent, Smith noted.

Malcolm told the representatives of the indictment in Virginia Wednesday of Hew Raymond Griffiths, of Bateau Bay, Australia , for his role as an alleged kingpin in Drink Or Die, a software piracy group founded in Russia in 1993. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is working to get Griffiths extradited to the United States, Malcolm said, and the indictment is part of the DOJ's "Operation Buccaneer," in which 20 U.S. defendants have been convicted of felony copyright offenses since December 2001.

"For too long, people engaged in piracy believed that if they were outside the borders of the United States , they could violate our intellectual property laws with impunity," Malcolm added. "They were wrong. This indictment and the extradition sends a clear and unequivocal message to everybody involved in illegal piracy that regardless of where you are, the Justice Department will find you, investigate you, arrest you, prosecute you, and incarcerate you."

Malcolm also called the creators of "warez" file-trading organized criminals, although he admitted warez fans aren't motivated by money. Many warez groups, who distribute pirated commercial software over the Internet, operate in a very organized fashion, Malcolm said, with a hierarchy based on how much individual members contribute to the group. Much of the pirated material on the Internet comes from warez groups, Malcolm suggested.