FBI Statistics on Pirates in Cyberspace

FBI, Dec 08, 2006

Does the number TWENTY THREE BILLION DOLLARS get your attention? That's how much money was lost in 2003 as a result of criminals swiping copyright-protected digital copies of music, movies, software, and games... and distributing them through websites, chat rooms, mass email, FTP, and peer-to-peer networks.

And there's a name to fit the crime: "intellectual property theft."

If you use peer-to-peer systems on the web (like Freenet or mp3 download sites), you could be asking for big trouble. If P2P software isn't configured correctly, it can open up your entire hard drive for others to see and download. If you're on a P2P network, you could be bumping up against all the worms and viruses carried by other users of that network. And you could become a carrier of worms and viruses that are written by misanthropic hackers specifically to spread via popular P2P networks. Run don't walk to our cyber letter , addressed to you, for details on these issues and on the crimes associated with P2P networks.