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Stop Piracy Now >
Hall of Shame
Hall Of Shame
The editorial board of SPN thinks that it's shameful that there are companies out there
openly engaged in piracy or supporting piracy, with little consequence. Clueless judges
hand down rulings that defy common sense and enable the theft to continue unabated.
Do you agree? Do you have a company or person in mind that you would like to nominate?
Click here to contact us to nominate a site or company. Don't forget to include your e-mail address when submitting your suggestion. Chosen submissions will appear on this page with a credit to the suggestor. Thank you!
Judge Gerald B. Lee
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Inktomi
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A district judge in the Eastern District of Virginia (Alexandria), Gerald Bruce
Lee has the distinct dishonor of having ruled that WhenU has a right to pop ads
over publisher's work. Lee ruled, amazingly, that pop-ups are a "burden" of
using the Internet, and it's shameful that judges who have no clue on how
the Internet works make rulings in a vacuum that hurt us all.
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Inktomi is a search engine company that engages in
monetization targeting of
websites in its index. If a website has copious listings, and appears capable of
paying, Inktomi targets them for monetization, i.e., deletes them from their
catalog and demands payment to be re-included. This conduct undermines the credibility
of Internet search results.
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Yahoo!
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Konrad v. Finckenstein
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The search engine that once had an apple-pie, aw-shucks image of niceness went completely
mercenary in 2004, mixing in sites that paid to be included with their regular search results.
Although the FTC demanded back in 2001 that paid results be clearly disclosed, Yahoo! concocted
a legit-sounding "Content Acquisition Program" (CAP) to deflect attention. SPN sees right through it, and
as we see it, Yahoo!'s actions pirate the credibility of Internet search results.
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On March 31st, 2004, Canadian Justice Konrad von Finckenstein ruled that P2P users that place copies of
music on a local computer are not in violation of copyright, because "no evidence was presented that
the alleged infringers either distributed or authorised the reproduction of sound recordings."
Ignoring the fact that the P's in P2P stands for "peer," Justice Finckenstein apparently lives
in an alternate reality universe where insular P2P users download files, but never actually swap with their peers.
Oh, really? Excuse us, Herr Finckenstein, if no one is swapping them, where do the files come from in the first place?
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Jeremy Jaynes
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Nominate A Pirate!
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In a world filled with spam, Mr. Jaynes has the distinction of being one of the most prolific spammers ever.
Convicted in November of 2004, the "horsey porn" promoter had established an operation capable of
pumping out 10,000 junk e-mails per day on his own T-1 connection, grossing more than $24 million
by pirating other people's resources and outright fraud. Thankfully, the State of Virginia has an
anti-spam law with some teeth, although, amazingly, the attorneys for Jaynes contend that the law is
an unconstitutional restriction on their clients right to "free speech."
In Jayne's distorted worldview, your inbox belongs to him, not to you, and his "right" is to
expose your children to things like bestial pornography without warning. Pirates are amazing, aren't they?
We can only hope that his criminal conviction will start to turn the tide against all spamming,
one of the most noxious forms of piracy undermining the Internet.
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You can see your favorite pirate here! Nominate a digital buccaneer today...
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