MINIMISING DAMAGE ONLINE
The online channel has never experienced such a sophisticated and globally- integrated technological crime network as the one it faces today. Online criminals have new tools at their disposal and are more adaptable than ever. Andy Churley looks at the best strategies for dealing with this growing problem.
Piracy and counterfeit goods continue to be some of the fastest growing types of online fraud. Each month, thousands of pirated e-books, soſtware applications, licence keys, music albums and movies are made available over the Internet to download for free, or to purchase as hard goods or from publicly available hosting sites and file- sharing networks.
Most anti-piracy and counterfeit measures are reactive rather than preventive, oſten relying on customer reports or eagle-eyed employees to police these diverse and rapidly changing networks informally.
Te driving requirement of services in this new world is rapidity of detection and successful takedown in order to minimise the effect of the counterfeit goods or pirated media being offered. However, much like in medicine,
the
ultimate goal is prevention rather than cure. Organisations are increasingly turning to early detection methods and intelligence gathering services to identify pirated media on websites rapidly and to tackle counterfeits before they are even offered for sale.
A comprehensive anti-piracy and counterfeit programme comprises four key elements:
Detection
Te most important element in minimising the damage
caused by content piracy and
counterfeiting fraud is early detection. No matter how rapid and effective the enforcement
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action is aſter detection, if the attack is not identified early enough, the financial damage caused to a brand can be substantial. Ideally, counterfeits and pirated content will be detected almost as soon as they are offered for sale or download, at which point rapid enforcement action can be taken.
A key question to ask when considering an anti- counterfeit or anti-piracy programme is “What data sources should we monitor?”.
Budgets will play a key role in determining the scope of any detection service. It is crucial to be clear what the objectives are for an anti-piracy or anti-counterfeit programme. Is the aim to:
and scope of the issue before undertaking enforcement, marketing and education programmes?
to protect loss of revenues?
the individuals or syndicates behind content piracy or counterfeit rings for civil or criminal prosecution?
following types of monitoring may be applicable. At certain times some of these information sources may be more useful than others. Terefore, any third party monitoring on behalf of the brand owner should have the capability to monitor any of the sources below as and when needed.
new domain name registrations can flag up suspicious activity before products are offered for sale.
sale using specific criteria to flag suspect items.
monitor these dynamically changing networks to identify content piracy.
of mails from spam feeds and honeypot accounts to identify links to pirated media automatically.
can provide a valuable early stage alerts to counterfeit products or pirated media. automated link crawling is very valuable.
can help identify links to pirated content and the network of users involved in file-sharing and counterfeiting.
ad hoc series of chat networks comprising hundreds of public domain servers. Pirated media, crack codes
sharing, these dynamic, ad hoc networks host pirated soſtware, e-books, movies and music.
to plan counterfeit production; monitoring these sites allows early detection and silent information gathering, heading off an incident before it begins.
thousands of newsgroups on the Internet, sometimes used by fraudsters to plan and coordinate operations.
Trademarks Brands and the Internet Volume 1, Issue 2 33
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