Page 422 - Introduction to Electronic Commerce and Social Commerce

410 12 Implementation Issues: From Globalization to Justification, Privacy, and Regulation

6. Research the topic of going “global in the social world.” where you can download movies, TV shows, music e-books,
Start with Adobe (2012). Identify the issues and the live sport games, software, and more. TPB has been ranked as
practices. Write a report. one of the most popular websites in the world. The site gener-
7. The number of lawsuits in the United States and else- ates revenue by advertisements, donations, and sales of mer-
where involving EC has increased. Have each team pre- chandise. The site is probably the most well known among
pare a list of 5 recent EC legal cases on each topic in this dozens of other sites that provide free access to copyrighted
chapter (e.g., privacy, digital property, defamation, pat- content.
ents). Prepare a summary of the issues of each case, the
parties, the courts, and dates. What were the outcomes
of these cases? What was (or might be) the impact of The Legal Situation
each decision?
8. Form three teams. Have two teams debate free speech The Pirate Bay has been involved in a number of lawsuits, both
versus protection of children. The third team acts as as a defendant and as a plaintiff. For an overview, see torrent-
judges. One team is for complete freedom of speech on freak.com/the-pirate-bay-turns-10-years-old-the-
the Internet; the other team advocates protection of chil- history-130810. Here are some examples. In Sweden, The
dren by censoring offensive and pornographic material. Pirate Bay company was raided by the Swedish police in 2006.
After the debate, have the judges decide which team pro- The site was shut down, but reappeared a few days later with
vided the most compelling legal arguments. servers hosted in different countries. In 2008, the Swedish gov-
9. It is legal to monitor employees’ Internet activity, e-mail, ernment began a criminal investigation against the founders of
and instant messages? Note that it is legal to open letters TPB for copyright theft. Three founders and a financier were
addressed to individuals sent to the company’s address. charged with promoting copyright infringement by facilitating
Why is the monitoring necessary? To what extent is it other people’s breach of copyright law by using TPB BitTorrent
ethical? Are employees’ rights being violated? Have two technology. For 34 cases of copyright infringement, the damage
teams debate these issues. claims could have exceeded US$12 million. The trial started on
10. Smart computer programs enable employers to monitor February 16, 2009, and ended on March 3, 2009, with a guilty
their employees’ movements online. The objective is to verdict that carried a 1-year prison sentence and a fine of US$3.5
minimize wasting time and computing resources, and million. The four founders lost on appeal in 2010 but succeeded
reduce theft by employees. These actions may invade pri- in getting reduced prison time; however, the copyright infringe-
vacy, and reduce confidence and loyalty. Find the various ment fine was increased. The site is now blocked by several
methods used to monitor employees (list their approaches) countries. The U.S. government considers TPB (together with
and list all possible negative aspects. Find case studies the Chinese sites Baidu and Taobao Marketplace) a top market
about the benefits (including increasing productivity) and for pirated and counterfeit goods.
the limitations and dangers. Relate monitoring to tele-
commuting and debate the issue.
Current Operation

CLOSING CASE: THE PIRATE BAY As of June 2014, TPB continues to offer torrent files and mag-
AND THE FUTURE OF FILE SHARING net links to facilitate file sharing for those using the BitTorrent
system. The site also offers downloading, watching videos, and
What had been considered a landmark 2009 copyright law searching for all types of media. In fact, much public support
case involving the Motion Picture Association of America for TPB was noted. In 2003, Piratbyrån (The Pirate Bureau), a
(MPAA) against illegal file sharing in Sweden appears to not Swedish organization, was established to support the free shar-
have significantly deterred online file sharing. In fact, just the ing of information (however, they disbanded in 2010). Political
opposite may have occurred. parties in many European countries have adopted the label
“The Pirate Party,” after a party in Sweden, which was formed
in 2006. Other countries followed suit, creating their own Pirate
An Overview Parties. The party supports the reform of copyright and patent
laws, government transparency, and net neutrality. In 2006, the
The Pirate Bay (TPB) site was launched in 2003 by hackers International Pirate Party Movement was formed as an umbrella
and computer activists as a BitTorrent tracker, make it possi- organization. In 2009, the Swedish Pirate Party won a seat in
ble to get free access to most media content (including copy- the European Parliament and in 2013, Iceland gained three
righted material) using BitTorrent peer-to-peer (P2P) similar seats. The Pirate Bay advocates copyright and patent
file-sharing protocol services (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ law reform and a reduction in government surveillance. In the
BitTorrent). The Pirate Bay site includes links to websites meantime, in Sweden, TPB’s founders have worked on several