65 Romanians learn about copyright

After having swept the rug from under the feet of legitimate IT businesses in Romania, the Romanian government now tackles another long standing IT-related problem: software and music or movie piracy among end-users.

1. An introduction to recent events

Recently, observers from the European Union have issued a country status report regarding the pending application of Romania to join the Union. The report was mostly fine, but it had its dark spots. Among them, a so called “yellow flag” (warning) regarding copyright infringement and piracy of digital content. A step up, actually, from the red flag previously issued six months ago.

Initially, this warning went largely unnoticed in the media, in the light of other more pressing issues that made the news these days, such as the aftermath of yet another country-wide spring flood, a new outbreak of bird flu caused by criminal neglect, or the President’s spine surgery.

Then, about a week ago, news started breaking out in several local newspapers, about an action started by the police in Iaşi, Suceava and Tulcea. People endulging in file sharing of illegal digital content were supposedly tracked down, their homes searched, and in those cases where evidence of copyright infringement was found they were picked up and now await prosecution.

The news were shortly followed by a wave of protests, mostly in online forums, from angry computer users, and has kept discussion topics full for weeks after that.

2. Procrastination as official government policy

As you probably guess, the copyright infringement and piracy issues in Romania have never been handled properly by the authorities. Unfortunately, the local political class has an awful tradition: they ignore a problem until the last possible moment, then they use a sledgehammer to kill the fly. The current situation has been allowed to develop by sheer neglect.

After the 1989 revolution, when both the physical and the virtual borders of the country were open and the Internet started to flourish, Romanians started tentative experiments. Some of them, like children doing things for the first time, started doing bad stuff: using fake credit card numbers to order stuff online; ripping people off by ordering stuff and not paying for it; breaking websites and online systems; flooding entire networks (at some point the Undernet IRC network was forced to refuse any client from Romania); writing and spreading viruses and other kinds of computer malware.

Did the government step in with a gentle but firm touch and put an early stop to such behaviour? No. Years passed and absolutely no counter-measures were taken. Young people started thinking that being a script-kiddie, a hacker, a flooder, a carder, a pirate, is something cool and desirable. As they grew, they taught their kids the same.

Complaints kept coming from outside the country (they still do, every day) but nobody did anything about them. Little by little, Romania got a very bad reputation on the Internet, because a state that won’t cooperate when it comes to law enforcement means bad news and bad business.

Nowadays, few online sites are willing to sell stuff to Romanians, or to make business with them. There are lots of onlines shops, escrow systems (such as Paypal) or even service providers (such as GoDaddy) that refuse to deal with Romanians. Among the foreigners, Romania is thought to be the same as Russia or Ukraine, a place of grim tales, a sort of nobody’s land where dangerous mafia groups do whatever they want. It’s not like that, but how’s an outsider to tell?

3. The current state of piracy and copyright in Romania

3.1. Meet John Doe, Romanian computer user

Allow me to give you some insight into what’s it like to be a computer user in Romania, today.

Following the many heated discussion in Romanian user forums these past week, I’ve made staggering discoveries. Many people don’t know there’s a copyright law. Most have only a vague notion of such a thing as copyright infringement, but usually a very wrong notion. Extremely few of them have ever bothered to look up the law (it’s freely available on the Internet) and try to read it. Yet many of them are happy to entertain rumours and myths regarding the letter of the law.

Even if some acknowledge the letter of the law, there’s near-complete disregard of its effects. Nobody was ever punished for copyright infringement, was it? Music and movies and software are free for the picking, right? Many have trouble understanding or agreeing that these are products made by someone, commercially, and that that someone expects something in return.

When a Romanian consumer buys a personal computer, they almost never figure in the cost of software licenses, because an aquintance or relative will be along shortly with a couple of CD’s and will install everything that’s needed. They could, and some do, buy ready-made computers with bundled OEM software, but people prefer asking the aquintance to put together a computer from scratch, because it comes out cheaper.

The ubiquitous aquintance will also be kind enough to connect the new computer to the Internet (or to a neighbourhood network) and show the new owner how to download everything they want: terrabytes of music, movies and software.

While the lack of awareness in regard to copyright is an important issue, we cannot overlook another: the income/prices ratio in Romania. The situation in this respect is almost paradoxical. The average Romanian is supposedly making about 200 euros a month (which is considered a decent income). I’ll be generous and say that this means a fifth of what an EU citizen makes (although it’s probably closer to ten times). At the same time, the prices for almost everything, and especially electronics and computer-related items, are as much as two to three times higher in Romania. Make the multiplication and you’ll find that a Romanian has to make an effort 10 to 30 times bigger than an EU citizen in order to buy the same items!

The neighbourhood networks haven’t been invented in Romania; they are used in many countries. In Romania they appeared because broadband has taken a very long time to develop, and people have taken matters into their own hands. Usually this means setting up local loops with makeshift methods and connect all the people in a block. The local network has very high speeds, everybody shares movies, music and software, the caretakers interconnect the network with the network across the street, everything’s for free and everybody’s happy.

There you have it: a country where the inhabitants are poorer and more ignorant than others when it comes to average computer use, and they make do with what they can and know.

3.2. How copyright is treated by the state and companies

Word on the street is that the large ISP’s receive tons of notifications from everybody, from Microsoft to RIAA, complaining that such and such IP has downloaded illegal content. They never do anything about it. The only thing they respond to is an official request from the local cops, which only happens if the remote party is willing to make the effort to come to Romania and stir things up. Even then, the justice system in Romania is not exactly free of corruption or political interests, so there’s no guarantee that the culprit will be convicted, or even prosecuted.

Besides, it would be hypocritical of the ISP’s to do something about it. At least two (Romtelecom and RDS) out of the three major ISP’s that cater to end-users have had advertising campaigns openly encouraging clients to use their connections for downloads, using punch lines such as “it’s faster to download the movie than go to the cinema”, or “you can now share movies and music with friends and relatives”. No, I’m not kidding. Sure, there are legal downloads too. Somehow, I doubt that’s the meaning people assumed, in a country where copyright is a fairytale.

Sometimes law enforcement organizations such as the FBI will come looking, but only for matters dealing with outstanding fraud or security issues, such as someone deploying a new type of worm on the Internet, or a fraud ring that grew too much. The police cooperates more or less, a head or two roll all the way to prison, and then there’s business as usual.

ORDA (the national copyright enforcement organisation) and BSA are long standing jokes around here, for the end-users, anyway. They only ever deal with corporations, not end-users, they usually announce in advance when they visit, and it takes a really dumb company to be caught with its pants down by them.

The state doesn’t care. Often, public institutions use illegal software and content themselves. It’s not uncommon to see an illegal copy of Windows or a bunch of MP3’s on the work computer in such an institution.

The same goes for companies. Let’s just say that nobody loses any sleep if half the computers on the premises run illegal copies of software, if every last employee has his own stash of MP3’s, or if the central file server has a “movie” section.

Finally, the real pirates, the ones that actually make a profit selling illegal copies of software and digital content, are still where they always were. They’re on the streets corners, selling CD’s and DVD’s, they advertise bootleg merchendise on websites, via email spam or passing lists of products and prices from person to person. The police largely ignores them, or takes its share.

4. Excessive measures at the last moment

Only in recent years did the government start to pay attention to the situation, and only when cornered by outside factors, such as express requests made by the FBI, or deadlines imposed by the looming join with the European Union.

Allow people to misbehave freely for over a decade, then pick a couple of scapegoats, throw them in jail for 15 years and that makes everything OK. This is the Romanian government’s famous recipe for law and order.

As you can expect, by now the very notion of copy rights is either unknown or a standing joke among the public. In order to put a dent in copyright infringement, radical measures have to be taken.

That’s what leads us to the recent events: a nation-wide sweep, coordinated by a newly created service, dealing exclussively with piracy and copyright issues.

The early reports stated that the authorities have started police swipes in only 3 cities, none of which was Bucharest, home of roughly half of the nation’s IT-savvy professionals and computer- and Internet-users. The initial targets were are all kinds of file sharing, with emphasis on DirectConnect, which is the most popular around here, as well as the medium in which it thrives: ISP’s and all kinds of local networks.

The police was rumored to prioritize people who shared the biggest amount of files. The procedure was rather straightforward: connect to a DC hub, download files from users, use their IP to identify them, obtain a warrant, search their houses, seize electronic storage medium and proceed to examine it. If illegal content was found (which was very likely), the owner would be prosecuted.

Later on, the police started clamping down on press reports. There were no more news detailing how the operation proceed, or in which counties were raids conducted. There were, however, official police statements, providing figures and statistics for the ongoing copyright enforcing operations.

It became apparent that the debute of the operation was rather clumsy, which was to be expected given the lack of experience of Romanian law enforcement in such matters. In at least one county the declarations were contradictory and a couple of officials even went as far as to state that downloading copyrighted content for personal use is fine, a statement which flagrantly contradicts the law and which they may have come to regret later.

As things progressed, the operation eventually became better organized. Authority representatives went on record declaring that end-users are not their primary target, that they’re mainly after the big pirate operations, the ones that sell bootlegged stuff for money, as well as illegal neighbourhood networks.

It’s true that in a country where you can bet that almost all computer users are infringing copyright, it’s not practical to arrest every last one of them. But you can conduct very efficient scare tactics, by gathering evidence, documenting cases and opening hundreds or even thousands of legal files. It worked, too: people started leaving DC hubs in droves, and the IT forums filled with related discussions: technical methods to keep them from being identified or meant to protect their files from being used as evidence, plus the neverending talks about the legal, political, economical and human rights implications.

It’s worth noting that the Romanian copyright law allows for sever fines against people who break it, and even jail time ranging from 6 months to 15 years for extreme cases. Copyright infringement is a criminal offense and police has a duty to react to such cases without necessarily being prompted by a victim. Furthermore, once a case has been opened, the prejudiced party has a right to claim reimbursement of damages, to publicize the case in mass-media, and to request that all hardware used in the making of the crime be destroyed.

5. An overview of related events in online media

Here I will offer links to online articles regarding these events, in chronological order. They are all (or most of them) in Romanian, but I intend to add my comments next to each one.

1. Do you download from the net? Do you have a license? (Ziarul de Iaşi, May 18, 2006)
   The article that started the hysteria. It warns Iaşi inhabitants that there’s a police action underway regarding illegal software and digital content. Police teams are doing home visits, covered by legal warrants, and look for illegal content. District attorney Marian Bulancea is quoted with a textbook declaration, saying that unauthorized reproduction of software is illegal. Every computer user in Romania is most likely a criminal as far as copyright is concerned, considering alledged figures of piracy as high as 90%. The police M.O. is to pick DirectConnect hub users at random (but with priority for those that share between 100 and 500 GB), make sure they offer illegal content, then ask for a warrant and proceed with the home visit. 11 such visits took place already and as much as 20 users have been involved. The ending of the article quotes readers mentioning the well known piracy excuses: lack of money, digital content should be free, we’re going to end up illiterate if we can’t get it nor afford it, we need it to work and learn.
2. The revolt of the Internet surfers (Ziarul de Iaşi, May 19 2006)
   As expected, the previous article had as much as 30,000 readers in one day (a lot for Romania), many of which jumped at the chance to protest against the depicted events. The reactions cover the entire spectrum of objections, many of which I’ve mentioned here already: the main reason seems to be the duplicity of the authorities, who choose to punish random people, while at the same time breaking copyright laws themselves. More or less funny stories have been supplied by readers to support this, such as the one about the guy who got out of a ticket by helping the policeman with advices about illegal software. Among the reactions, the need for a information campaign is stressed. Finally, the district attorney of Iaşi, Marian Bulancea, is once again quoted as saying that the action will continue regardless of public protests. He also stops to mention that his personal computer has only freeware or licensed software on it.
3. The fight against piracy has begun! (Softpedia, May 21, 2006)
   softpedia.com, a Romanian website specialized in (legal) software downloads, feels obliged to tackle the matter in an article of its own. The article starts by deploring the vicious circle involving escalation of software costs and piracy, and takes the time to make the distinction between copyright infringement and piracy (albeit in a rather fuzzy manner). They quote articles from the Constitution regarding the privacy of the individual and his home, but neglect to realize that those no longer apply when the individual is suspected of criminal actions. A suggestion is offered to raise the income level of end-users, because they are “eager” to pay for software, games, movies and music — a misguided opinion if I ever heard one. The article goes on to claim that piracy is caused by ideology rather than financial reasons (thereby contradicting their previous statement), by the people’s protest against making money by “shuffling ideas around and putting a copyright on them”, or by patents — again, a statement that shows a lack of understanding for basic intellectual property notions. It ends by outlining the clash between digital content producers and their right to obtain a profit from their work, the users’ need to “save money”, and the authorities, who are trying to protect both groups (from each other, probably), while doing so within a “functional system of justice” (I’m guessing they don’t mean the Romanian system). All’s well as long as no fundamental rights of the users are breached, concludes the article.
4. The surfer’s revolt turns into a “velvet revolution” (Ziarul de Iaşi, May 22, 2006)
   I’m not sure the author of this article knew what “velvet revolution” is supposed to mean, but let’s overlook that. This article claims that the people’s reaction has toned down after another district attorney from Iaşi, Victor Condreanu, declared that only people that share “hundreds of GB” will be targeted. The article then goes on to blame a so called “hacker” for their own shortcomings: one reader took advantage of JavaScript being allowed in comment fields and redirected an article page to a site dedicated to games; a grave fault which could’ve resulted in a much more serious breach of security by means of XSS. Thankfully, it’s been fixed. The article ends by boasting with their site’s Web traffic over the last few days and how it has made their website overtake other popular Romanian news sites. A statement which is probably true, considering that a lot of Romanian websites choose to make their statistics public for the dubious honor of ranking high in online visitor trackers such as www.trafic.ro.
5. Iaşi, pirated software heaven (Evenimentul Zilei, May 22, 2006)
   According to a statement from Roxana Agrigoroaei, spokeswoman for the Iaşi County Police Department, the ongoing raids in the city of Iaşi are targeting those who make a profit from copyright infringement (pirates) and not people who get illegal software for personal use. The concentrates on the state of affairs in the local Technical University “Gheorghe Asachi”. There are about 8,000 studens on campus, all using various pieces of software for anything from study and work to entertainment or commercial gains. The general sentiment is of disregard towards the fact that the software may be used illegally. Any student who needs a certain program can get it at minimum effort, for free. Often, they are required to use certain expensive pieces of software for their curriculum, but the University doesn’t offer this software legally, due to lack of money. Therefore everybody uses illegal copies, and even the professors encourage the students to use them. The only ones who can get legal software are students of Automatics and Computers, and then it’s just the operating system (I reckon Microsoft Windows). This is all that the University can offer, for 1,200 of its 10,000 students. In the closing, the article covers an older raid, at the beginning of May, which discovered an illegal studio on campus, operated by two students who were caught with about 1,250 optical discs in their room, discs they were routinely selling all over the country and shipping via regular snail-mail.
6. Revolt on the Internet (Obiectiv de Suceava, May 26, 2006)
   This is a local publication distributed in the city of Suceava. This online article refers to a paper article of theirs, which covers similar police actions specific to their county. Unlike in Iaşi, the authorities in Suceava seem to take a distinctly different approach. They claim they’re after the owners and administrators of neighbourhood networks, many of which make a profit without being legally organized and without paying tax, a clear case of fiscal fraud. The copyright issue, on the other hand, is described in very confusing terms. The declarations of the spokeswoman for the authorities, Luminiţa Hurjui, seems to hint that the police is only after those that distribute illegal content for a profit, not those that download for personal use, although she also makes it clear that any kind of distribution of such content is illegal. They also seem to think that the owner of a DirectConnect hub is the one distributing all the content, and that users have nothing to do with it, which is obviously wrong.
7. Started in Iaşi, “Internet madness” can bring the police at anybody’s door (Gardianul, May 26, 2006)
   This article explains that the actions started in Iaşi will soon be taken to national level. The article goes on to describe in detail this operation and the implications for end-users. Unlike the previous article, the DirectConnect hub owners are exhonerated, but administrators of illegal local networks are still very much in the focus, being considered a well known medium for swapping illegal content. Also, a very troubling comparison of piracy with drug traffic(!) made its way in the article. What’s even more troubling is that the comparison is made by Dan Ioniţă, a so called “IT specialist” working for the police, who then goes on to prove, by means of a hardly eloquent interview, that he either got the job by mistake or he’s simply a lousy speaker. For instance, he states that the authorities do not indend to put a stop to piracy but only to make an example out of a few cases, hoping that they’ll scare the rest of computer users into “laying low” — a point of view which differs drastically from what we hear from other counties and from the national overseers (see below).
8. The Police confirms nation-wide actions aimed at the sharing system in neighbourhood networks (Gardianul, Mai 27, 2006)
   This article quotes Monica Otava, head of the Service for protection of intellectual property at national level. The main target is once again confirmed as being the neighbourhood networks, be they legally formed or not, as the main medium for propagation of illegal content. She confirms that the action is to be taken to national level and that actions similar to the ones in Suceava and Iaşi will be conducted weekly all over the country. The article mentions that this was made possible by the recent “change of legislation” but it’s not clear what they mean; the copyright law in Romania was ratified in 1996 and amended in 2004 and 2005 (September), which is not so recent. Anyway, it seems that the raids are underway and other cities, such as Tulcea, are already reporting the first results. Once again, the article stresses the fact that the DirectConnect hubs will be infiltrated by police officers who will proceed to gather preliminary evidence, then identify the culprits, get warrants and search their houses for illegal content. The self-admitted role model of the Romanian authorities in this matter are apparently the US authorities. Monica Otava explains that the Service she’s heading was created on February 10 this year, and that it deals exclusively with copyright issues, not with computer criminals in general. She also compares what they’re doing to fighting drug traffic, a very disturbing analogy in my opinion. Another interesting statement from Otava: she sais that the Service doesn’t have a lot of experience [in fighting copyright infringement], and neither does police around the country.
9. The bomb was a dud. Download peacefully, there won’t be any searches (Monitorul de Suceava, May 27, 2006)
   This is one of the most confusing articles of the lot. It quotes Alin Botezatu, head inspector and spokesman of the Suceava Police Department, saying that there aren’t any searches conducted at the homes of the users and that the most recent action of the kind was conducted last year. He goes on to declare that “downloading for personal use is fine”, and that people who download movies, music and software will not be a target. District attorney Luminiţa Hurjui makes another appearance (see above) and confirms these statements and actually says that “if, for instance, you download a movie from the network and you watch it, there’s absolutely no problem”. It’s at the very least disconcerting to see the authorities go on record making this kind of statement, in direct contradiction with the law, and in light of all the other articles in the media. Hurjui goes on to state that in such a case, the one responsible is not the end-user, but the network administrator, another very troubling misconception. Something seems very wrong in Suceava, in my opinion. Either the declarations are genuine, in which case I wonder why Suceava makes such a different stand from the other counties; or they’ve been fabricated, to some nefarious end (or due to incompetence or misunderstanding, which can’t be dismissed). Either way, it’s downright strange for journalists and authorities to tell people to keep on being criminals, right in the middle of a nation-wide police action.
10. Piracy levels are dropping (Realitatea TV, May 28, 2006)
    This article quotes official BSA declarations which state that the overall piracy level in Romania has gone down 2% during 2006 so far; that “hundreds of people are being investigated for breaking intellectual property laws”; and that the piracy level at the end of 2005 was 72% (not 90%, as stated by a previous article). There’s also the usual red herring we’ve come to expect from BSA, qualifying estimated costs of unpurchased digital content ($100m) as “loss”, as if it were a sure thing. The article confirms that authorities all over the country are currently investigating hundreds of cases (the same hundreds mentioned earlier?), that dozens of home searches were conducted and several computer harddrives were seized. The action targets “the spread of digital content via neighbourhood networks”. The article ends by claiming that the state has gained several million dollars and that 3,000 jobs were created due to the decrease of piracy; an obvious misquote, since another article (see below) makes it clear that these are “would be” figures, that may be achieved once piracy drops another 10%.
11. Internet police only looks for the big pirates (Cotidianul, May 29, 2006)
    One of the more level-headed and well informed articles. It stresses that the actual pirates that make a profit from selling illegal content are the first target of the authorities, not end-users. It also makes several interesting points. The illegal neighbourhood networks will be the most vulnerable, since they are already committing fraud by not paying tax; their demise will undoubtedly be welcome by owners of legal networks and ISP’s, since the competition is quite big. The use of excessive measures is revealed to be an initiative of the Romanian authorities, not imposed by the Union in any way. The difficulty of making clear legal cases when the Internet is involved is being underlined. The article doesn’t fail to note the lobby done by ISP associations and organizations such as BSA against unorganized end-users, and that file sharing is found in all countries, not just Romania. Finally, we get roughly the same figures from the Realitatea article, but explained better: a BSA appointed lawyer claims that a reduction in piracy down to 64% over 2005-2009 would bring bring the IT industry (Romanian or otherwise?) an extra $430mil, an extra $670mil would go to the state gross income, and $76mil more to tax; 3,000 new jobs would be created in IT. And, again, the same BSA red herring claiming $111mil as “losses”. I wonder why it was $100mil in the Realitatea article, did it increase overnight?
12. The IT pirates’ bravado (Ziua de Iaşi, May 29, 2006) (local copy, zipped PDF)
    Here we find out that the fight against copyright infringement was supposed to take place between 2003 and 2007, and that in October 2005 Romania was awarded a red flag for this problem by the EU overseers, but that we’ve managed to move up to a yellow flag in these past 6 months. The article informs us that there are 95 district attorneys all over the country specializing in this kind of issues, and an acknowledgment of the fact that lack of enforcement in this area up to last year is the main reason so many people were able to create profitable businesses out of pirating digital content. The recent step up in police activity is due to the impending joining of Romania with the EU. We’re told, however, that from the 7,200 cases documented, only 27 fines were applied, and 9 persons were sentenced to prison, but received suspension. We’re also told of one so far unprecedented case, in the city of Călăraşi, where a man was convicted to 6 months in jail (for real this time) for distribution of pirated goods. It’s worth noting that 6 months is the absolute minimum jail penalty under the Romanian copyright law, if that’s what this was about. Hundreds more cases are being currently investigated in the counties of Iaşi and Tulcea. The BSA declarations are present here as well, but distorted (not surprisingly, since it relies on the misquote from Realitatea TV). The article also speculates that there could be much better protected piracy rings out there, whose members do not get caught or can’t be convicted due to lack of evidence. It goes on to overview some of the methods that could be used by people to protect themselves against the police: anonymous proxy servers, dynamic IP addresses, using file sharing systems that don’t divulge the peers’ IP’s, encrypting information on hard-disks.
13. Who sings from under the gramophone (Cotidianul, May 30, 2006)
    Again, an article that ensures that not one of the people who download and share files, even illegal, has so far suffered any consequences due to the “Gramophone” operation. The police have declared they’re only after those that attempt to make money from this kind of files, and they’re searching them by targeting those with over 50 GB in shared files. They also stress that the neighbourhood networks are not targeted either. Varujan Pambuccian, a well known activist for a saner Romanian IT, as well as member of the Chamber of Deputies and head of the IT Committee within the Chamber, has pointed out that discriminating against one type of networks is probably a sign of nefarious interests from someone’s part; all networks should be treated equally when it comes to illegal file-sharing. Dinu Malacopol, a representative for UPC Astral, one of the biggest ISP’s in Romania, denies any connection between his company and the “Gramophone” operation. The end of the article presents an interesting distinction between Romania and other European countries: while abroad usually the owners of the copyrights are the ones that gather evidence and sue copyright infringers, the whole thing being a civil matter, in Romania it is possible for it to become a criminal matter and it is preferred this way, because it makes the justice system swifter and more efficient.
14. They’re lying to you! The police gets into your computers anytime they want to (Gardianul, May 30, 2006)
    Leaving aside the panic-stricken title, the article is very interesting. An official statement issued from the Police Headquarters tells us that the police raids are going strong and that an inter-service protocol has been enacted among 26 Romanian state and law enforcement institutions in order to tackle piracy and copyright infringement. We get a lot of actual figures that tell us how many cases were discovered so far, grouped by the law they broke; we get total figures of confiscated materials, their estimated value, and what fines were applied. There’s an interview with Catalin Popescu, head inspector and spokesman for the Headquarters. For some reason, he avoids confirming that there’s one centralized police action called “Operation Gramophone”, but he admits there are nation-wide actions targeting breach of copyright. He tells us that policemen may very well be working “undercover”, that all their actions are sanctioned by a judge, and that there have been legal searches conducted. For some reason, he clearly avoids answering the reporter when he’s asked if he has pirated CD’s at home. Finally, he expresses his beliefs that there’s not going to be a “revolt of the computer users”; this is all a perfectly normal procedure, since the law is being broken. Rodica Pârvu, director of ORDA (Romanian Office of Copyright) follows, stating that a lot of people will be affected by these actions, but that she trusts that the Romanian situation is not as bad as it seems. She says that Romania is not a big producer of pirated goods, just a big user, and that the issue of neighbourhood networks was raised in other countries as well, such as France, where there are about 10 mil. estimated users involved.
15. Exclusive: The Guardian uncovers the “Gramophone” protocol (Gardianul, May 31, 2006)
    Indeed, the article presents a full copy of the protocol that will be signed and enacted by 26 organizations in order to cooperate for fighting piracy, counterfeiting and copyright infringement. The protocol is supposed to be upheld even after Romania joins the EU in 2007. Among the 26 entities there are law enforcement organizations, customs services, commercial and show-biz representatives, state institutions. Some of the goals of the protocol: to enforce the relevant laws; to determine whether the relevant laws need modifications; to create legal precedents and build legal experience for copyright-related matters; to cooperate with organizations and similar protocols abroad; to implement informative campaigns meant to increase public awareness and to educate in matters dealing with copyright. There’s at least one important thing missing from the protocol: the definition of “piracy”; it is missing, and for all we know it may refer to high-sea hijacking.
16. Romanians are more severe than the French in regard to file-sharing (Gîndul, May 31, 2006)
    This articole protests against the Romanian authorities’ eagerness to enforce copyright laws, by comparing Romania with the situation in other European countries. It points out that, generally speaking, the legal take on file-sharing is far from clear, and that the European Copyright Directive allows member states a certain amount of freedom in implementing their own copyright laws, freedom which countries like France have taken advantage of to legalize file-sharing made for personal use. The articole goes on to tell us that in the raids made in Iaşi illegal material confiscated from end-users amounted to the equivalent of roughly 157 DVD’s per user, while in Tulcea the average was about 20. It also points out that since the police targets users sharing at least 50 GB, it means that owning and sharing about 11 DVD movies already puts users in danger. They compare these figures with the amounts of pirate DVD’s that enter the country daily from Russia and China, via large and well organized smuggling networks. They end by underlining that not even one such network was touched, so far, by operation “Gramophone”.
17. File-sharing, faial-schering, partajare de fisiere… (Legi Internet, June 2, 2006)
    Bogdan Manolea is a Romanian lawyer with an interest in Internet law, intellectual property and communications. This is an entry in his personal blog regarding these events, made after he was invited to a radio show on City FM together with Laurenţiu Oprea from ORDA (Romanian Registry for Copyright) and Alexandru Oancea from ATIC (Communications and Information Technology Association). He underlines several points he found particularly important. He wonders if the police has nothing better to do than to pick on hundreds of end-users instead of dealing with the actual pirates who go about their business unchallenged. He adds that he has a lawyer aquintance who’s actually eager to get involved as defender in the first case tried against an end-user. He mentions the point of view of Dan Popi, the representative for a music publishing house, who stated that he doesn’t blame Romanians for downloading, since the legal merchendise available via Internet in Romania is pretty slim. The director for C-Zone (a Romanian ISP) was present, and Manolea took the oportunity to ask him whether he would disclose the identity of a customer at a simple request from the police or D.A.’s office, or they would require a judge’s decision; he was answered that the company’s lawyers would cross this bridge when they came to it. Manolea also noted that the ISP’s may want to make a decision ahead of time, just in case a wrong one will backfire. At the very least, some clear practices should be worked out between ANISP (the ISP Association in Romania) and the police. He ends up by noting that the file-sharing fenomenon is global and that the warning flag from EU was most likely targeted at the actual pirates, not file-sharers. (And he links back to this article, which was very nice of him. :) )
18. A quarter million Romanians threatened to go to jail (Ziua, June 3, 2006)
    This article estimates the number of DirectConnect hubs in Romania at this moment to be 500, with roughly 250,000-300,000 users. All of them are in danger of being affected by the current police operation, because the authorities are not willing to make the difference between uploading and downloading illegal content. The law states that only distribution of illegal content should be punished, not personal use. However, police representatives counter that DC hub users must necessarily be offering illegal content themselves in order to be able to download; while it is true that one must offer content in order to be allowed to download, it doesn’t have to be illegal. The article goes on to estimate that as much as 4 million Romanians (out of a 23 million total population) can well be punished by the enforcement of this law, which only goes to show that somethings is very wrong with it. It is noted that the legal interpretation of file sharing throughout the world is abusive towards end-users, and that some countries, such as the United States, have gone as far as holding people responsible for creating the computer programs used for file sharing, or Internet Service Providers, or administrators of DirectConnect or BitTorrent servers, decisions which can reach absurd levels very easily. All this, while in Romania extremely few actual pirates (the ones who sell massive amounts of illegal material for profit) have so far been brought to justice. Street-corner peddlers, Russian and Ukrainean piracy rings as well as mass reproduction clandestine studios keep on doing business under the noses of the police, and sometimes with their complicity, facilitated with regular bribes. And in the meanwhile, operation “Gramophone” has started from the end-users, punishing them directly, without being at least preceeded by an informative campaign at national level.
19. The Internet surfers’ offensive (Ziua de Iaşi, June 20, 2006) (local copy, zipped PDF)
    It appears that Romanian file-sharers have taken an example from their US counterparts and are now placing a document akin to the bogus Internet Privacy Act in their DirectConnect shares. Basically, what both misguided attempts try to do is forbid law enforcers from accessing the shared files. The Romanian version claims that the people not complying with the request will break a long list of laws and they even threaten with lawsuits (a joke, no doubt, given the state of the Romanian justice system) that would ask for fantastic amounts of money (EUR 1 mil.) in damages. What the writers and users of the manifesto fail to consider is that a person’s rights in regard to privacy and such are no longer fully observed the moment they become crime suspects. Authority representatives have pointed out this much, and expressed serious doubt that this document will have any effect in deterring their actions. Nevertheless, already several lawyers have countered by saying that police access to a person’s home and computer is valid only with a warrant, which would be issued by a judge only in the light of clear evidence. And in spite of the file-sharers’ misguided attempts of fighting back, there’s no denying the strong and mounting counter-reaction of the people to the “Gramophone” operation. The file sharing communities already appear to be circulating a message calling for a protest manifestation in Iaşi, on the 1st of July, in Piaţa Unirii (Union Square). There would be an interesting similarity to the recent manifestations in Stockholm and Göteborg, caused by the abusive shutdown of Pirate Bay, considered the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker.
20. No result in the fight against IT pirates (Ziua de Iaşi, September 9, 2006) (local copy, zipped PDF)
    Cases opened against people targeted by the “Gramophone” operation are described as “next to zero chances of finalization”. Most of the people involved will get away with at most a fine or without any legal repercusion at all. Why? According to DA Marius Bulancea the main reason is lack of ORDA personnel. The ORDA is the Romanian state organization that deals with copyright breach and they’re swamped enough as it is, apparently. The second reason is a tendency to (finally) consider the “social danger” posed by these people. The DA goes on to differentiate between a person who owns 2-3 pirate movies and someone caught with “a thousand”. But even more interesting is the fact that the Police intends to never give back the confiscated computers, which could pose interesting complications. Their reason: the need to “thouroughly” inspect them for any signs of criminal activity. The DA says there have been cases when such materials led the Police to important credit card fraud rings, for instance. Still, not opening legal actions against someone but at the same time confiscating their computer and invading their privacy is quite an interesting sort of punishment.

6. Discussion threads in public IT forums

Here is a list of links to discussion threads related to these events, discussions conducted in some of the most popular Romanian IT forums:

• Controale file sharing (Chip)
• politzia m-a prins ca distribuiam inet, pls help (Computer Games)
• In viitorul apropiat se va interzice si la noi? Cat de apropiat este acest viitor? (Computer Games)
• Faceti download din retea? Aveti licenta? (Softpedia)
• Faceti download din retea? Aveti licenta? (Craiova Forum)

7. My conclusions

The European Union wants Romania to work for those green flags. The Romanian government is eager to appear to do so.

They had 2003-2007 (four years) to do something about copyright and piracy, and they got around to it in May 2006. It’s extremely late, it’s like a student who never touched the books all semester cramming the night before the exam.

Worse, the Romanian authorities have no practical experience in intellectual property matters. They are only now discovering that this matter is a very complicated one, that it has complex legal, moral, social, commercial and many other implications. It is so complex that a clear solution has been escaping other governments for years now, in spite of them having the experience, the willingness, the resources and the opportunity to find it.

Furthermore, there are many other circumstances which make this even harder than it should be:

• The Government has changed for the better only recently (at the end of 2004).
• The authorities are mostly computer-illiterate, and the people who make the laws have been known to produce absurd regulations.
• The Justice system as well as many state institutions are still politically-subservient and corrupt. This impacts nearly all aspects of law enforcement as well as business.
• Most of the public has next to zero awareness to copyright issues, while companies (both foreign and local) and state institutions have next to total disregard for it.
• The consumers have very low income and yet prices that are higher than in other countries, making the purchase effort many times greater.
• Corruption and ignorance make the state institutions persist in making fantastically expensive deals with foreign and local software houses, without looking for cheaper alternatives.

A sane approach to the issue should have started much sooner, at the very latest in the beginning of 2005, and should have included the following parts:

1. Analyzing the issue and proposing a set of counter-measures, which should have been debated with the involvment of representatives of all the affected fields: consumers, show-biz, mass-media, communications, law enforcement.
2. Revising the current copyright law and extempting file-sharing and downloading for personal use from the kind of harsh punishments now in effect (15 years in prison, maximum penalty!)
3. A public campaign to raise awareness of copyright issues and to propose legal alternatives to at least software.
4. A general crackdown on actual pirates (ie. those that make a profit selling illegal materials), combined with lighter punishments (fines) for people who simply infringe copyright.
5. A general crackdown on state institutions and companies. If people’s apartments can be raided, so should ministry offices and multinational company premises. Anything less will just be seen as hypocrisy.

So far, the Government actions have debuted in what can only be regarded as a clumsy manner. They started the action in several counties before a clear protocol at national level was in effect, which resulted in random actions, conflicting official statements and a general near-panic among end-users.

Even as they get better organized, it is still apparent that they so far avoid the real issues. The authorities put on a fake and tasteless show, in which masked policemen raid apartments and thousands of end-users are intimidated by the opening of legal actions against them.

In short, what we have are scare tactics aimed at the easiest target, the general public. All while the rest of the real issues are virtually untouched and the surface of the matter has been barely scratched.