Cybercrime

Cybercrime Markets

The Internet provides a venue for illicit markets to be developed and maintained and for criminals to hide their identities and operate in remote locations. The development of the mobile phone to include Internet capabilities has increased the criminals' abilities to remain hidden. For instance, an individual may use a mobile phone to purchase and sell items—either legally or illegally. It is possible that these websites are not traceable. Currently, the illegal markets that are available are endless and can include illegal adoptions, surrogate mothers, egg donors, obtaining banned substances, forbidden animals, endangered species, and illegal gambling.

Perhaps the largest cybercrime market focuses on the illegal distribution of copyrighted material (i.e., digital piracy). This behavior has been defined as the act of copying digital goods, software, digital documents, digital audio, and digital video for any reason other than to create a backup. While digital piracy may take place in several ways, the Internet has provided a quick and efficient avenue for digital piracy. Not only does the Internet provide a faster opportunity for distribution, it also allows individuals to anonymously perform the actual taking of digital media. In addition, the Internet is transnational. This means that someone wishing to take the digital media may be in a different country. The Internet makes taking digital media easier. The act itself requires only a few key strokes and clicks of a mouse.

Digital piracy has become detrimental to the producers and distributors of digital media. Reports of industries and companies losing billions of dollars due to piracy are common. This has a corollary effect of preventing governments from taxing these dollars; thus, social services may be hindered because of digital piracy. It is thus clear that digital piracy causes problems not only for industries and companies but also for government. Government has recognized the issues that may come from intellectual property that includes digital media. To respond to piracy, the United States passed an expanded copyright law in 1976. The law has since been amended several times to provide clarity about the types of media that are not to be pirated and to provide guidelines for the types of criminal punishments that are allowable along with the civil ramifications. Thus, when individuals burn an extra copy of a music CD, download music from the Internet without paying, or use a peer-to-peer network to download music information, they are pirating music. This is especially true for digital music piracy, which is committed through a multitude of modus operandi (e.g., CD burning, peer-to-peer networks, local area network file sharing, digital stream ripping, and mobile piracy). The penalties from these acts and legislation may be civil (e.g., $10,000 per pirated copy) and criminal (e.g., possible jail sentences).

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