With the advent of universal social applications such as Google Friend Connect, Facebook Connect, OpenID, etc., we have seen more websites in the last year or so become part of a large community some call the Social Web. I know many of my readers are from all over the world and already on one social network or another. Most people have a Google account.
So I decided to add Google Friend Connect functionality to Knockoff Report. What does it mean to you? It will not affect the static content of the site, but it will give you the ability to claim yourself as someone giving me moral support (best reason) and also to give you the ability to comment on posts more easily. Click it. You know you want to.
So I was at a political event in Downtown Dallas tonight and talked with a number of friends and acquaintances. I also met a few new people namely some folks from the defense arena. Not my favorite people but the man I support for D.A. invited me, oh, and there was free barbecue.
Among the new acquaintances with whom I had interesting conversation was a Judge. 
I explained to her what I did for a living: I help companies stop people from selling counterfeit products. She responded by telling me that she had just returned from China and brought back a whole mess of counterfeit luxury items. She immediately flogged into a “I know it supports terrorism, but they (vendors) are just businessmen” quibble. I said, “You know its immoral to buy counterfeit products, right?” She said it isn’t immoral because it’s not illegal to buy them, only to sell them. And I’m thinking, “Right. Am I on Candid Camera?”
I cocked my usual one-eyebrowed grin and gave her my best “are-you-really-this-much-of-a-dingbat?” look and excused myself to the bar. Those of you who know me personally know I am not one to feign respect. I shudder at the thought of the ignorance of some folks.
I told you that story in order to tell you this one…
This is one reason I have become politically active in the Dallas area, particularly Collin County, which is the most affluent county in the United States and a hub for worldwide corporations. 
I am supporting judges’ candidacies whom I know to be educated on IPR issues. One local candidate who impressed me, and I am supporting, is Dallas IP litigation attorney Wendy McMillon. I know many of our organizations focus on lobbying DC and State Capitals (which is great), but do not forget that these local posts are the bricks and mortar of our society. Fighting ignorance of IP theft starts at home. Read up on your candidates, meet them, interview them, and vote for the smart ones. Do it.
Now I’m going to finish my coffee.
(download as MP3)
Well, we’ve finally done it. Nils Montan and I recorded the first ever episode of our podcast. As many of you know, Nils & I are IP geeks to the core and we also spend the bulk of our time on the Internet. Our voices are heard all over including our AntiCounterfeiting group on LinkedIn which we have been co-moderating since 2008 and have amassed almost one thousand members.
Aptly, our Episode One guest is attorney Eric Fingerhut and our topic is social media. In this episode, Fingerhut discusses his creation of the International Cycling Law Association and the uses of social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
We are excited and honored to feature a theme song by blues/rock legend Walter Trout. “She Takes More Than She Gives” (duet w/ John Mayall) is the 1st track on Walter’s 2006 album “Full Circle“.
You can listen to the podcast right here online by clicking on the above embedded player, or click on the iTunes or RSS link to subscribe to the podcast using your portable music player.
- The Guardian, Tuesday 5 January 2010 (Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent)
Internet pirates are moving away from safe havens such as Sweden to new territories that include China and Ukraine, as they try to avoid prosecution for illegal file sharing, according to experts.
For several years, piracy groups that run services allowing music, video and software to be illegally shared online have been using legal loopholes across a wide range of countries as a way of escaping prosecution for copyright infringement.
In the last year there has been a significant shift, say piracy experts, as the groups have worked to stay beyond the reach of western law enforcement.
The change is rooted in the evolution of “bulletproof hosting”, or website provision by companies that make a virtue of being impervious to legal threats and blocks. Not all bulletproof services are linked to illegal activities, but they are popular among criminal groups, spammers and file-sharing services.
Rob Holmes, of the Texas law firm IP Cybercrime, which has worked to close down several bulletproof operations, said successful hosts were now starting to get stronger. “Some of the more popular ones have become more strongholds than they were previously,” he said. “It’s an industry and it always will be. When you think about it, bulletproof hosting is just a data version of money laundering.”
Read the full story here.
“There will always be a place to run to,” said Rob Holmes, of IP Cybercrime. “Each time a law passes, or a new country creates some kind of stumbling block for them, they’ll always find another place to do this. It goes back to the speakeasies in the 1920s – when one place got busted, they would just congregate in another place.”
Since today is the first day that one is able to register for the International Trademark Association Meeting in Boston (the INTA Annual Meeting), it reminded me that the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (the IACC) will also be holding its Annual Meeting in Beantown right before the INTA Meeting.
Holmes and Montan will be doing some special stuff leading up to and especially during these meetings for our IP community and we hope you will join us there. Don’t worry, plenty of time for details in the future.
Plus, as Nils likes to say -” if you can’t find out what Holmes and Montan are up to – you aren’t trying too hard.”
Last July, a jury of his peers in Boston found defendant Joel Tenenbaum liable for 
copyright infringement to the tune of $675,000, or, $22,000 per song that he shared over the KaZaA peer-to-per file sharing network (parents of college aged students downloading music in their dorms take note). Tenenbaum is, of course, represented by some of the best lawyers in the land who want music and all copyrighted works to be free. His lawyers have filed a goofy brief with the court asking that the award be overturned as it is unconstitutionally too high. Too bad Mr. Tenenbaum – pay up.
Even only a year ago, spam primarily consisted only of unwanted email in your inbox. But now as blogs become more popular, services such as Google Reader make it easy for people to aggregate those blog feeds (commonly RSS and Atom) into your inboxes.
Along with feeds/blogs to which you specifically subscribe, one can also subscribe to keywords and topics known as ‘tags’. Replica watch spammers constantly have to innovate ways to make it to your computer without getting caught in your spam filters. This is also a method some call ‘indirection’ which takes a web surfer to a page that acts as a placeholder prior to linking them to the actual website selling the goods. This is a method to evade security features built into most popular browsers. The image on the right is an example of what such an ad may look like.
Folks, if there is money in selling replicas, bad guys are going to figure out a way to sell them. They key is staying one step ahead. The only way to do that is to hire a good team.
Now I’m going to finish my coffee.
I first observed this group a few years ago doing business as Managed Solutions Group (MSG) when they were popping up as a US-based web host for China-based sellers of counterfeit goods.
