Europol,
along with othr law enforcement agencies round the world, has shut down
690 domains allegedly being used by crooks to sell counterfeit goods.
The Transatlantic 3 operation, also known as Project Cyber
Monday IV, has seen 297 domain name seizures in the US, with another 393
in Belgium, Denmark, France, Hungary, Romania, Spain and the United
Kingdom. A similar Europol project last year saw 132 domains seized.
Europol fighting counterfeit crooks
The City of London Police were involved in the operation,
alongside a host of other law enforcement agencies from across the
globe.
Visitors to any of the sites will now see a notice
informing them the site has been seized as part of Transatlantic 3, as
seen below
“Counterfeiters take advantage of the holiday spirit of
shoppers around the world and sell cheap fakes to unsuspecting consumers
everywhere,” said US Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting
director John Sandweg.
“Consumers need to protect themselves, their families, and
their personal financial information from the criminal networks
operating these bogus sites.”
Yet taking down the industry, or even disrupting it in a
significant way will prove tricky. “In a market economy there will never
be a complete fix – when goods have a value there will always be
someone seeking to exploit consumer demand for those goods by selling
apparently the same thing more cheaply,” Mark Owen, partner in the Trade
Marks, Copyright & Media team at law firm Taylor Wessing, told TechWeekEurope.
“What the regulators are doing is seeking to use the same
technology which the pirates are abusing in order to impede their
activities. However, it’s like the police moving on unauthorised street
vendors on Oxford Street – they simply pack up and move a little further
down the road.
“Some arrests may well take place but the resources
required to shut down a lot of websites after trap purchases may be a
lot less than an equal number of individual prosecutions. In addition,
the websites closed down have been located in a number of countries,
and so coordinating arrests and prosecutions becomes even harder.”
Source: http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk
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