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House Examines Online Infringement and Counterfeiting (2d Hearing)

by Christina Frangiosa | 1 Comment


The House Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet held a hearing on “Promoting Investment and Protecting Commerce Online: Legitimate Sites v. Parasites, Part II” on April 6, 2011, to further examine methods of theft online – including both copyright infringement and counterfeiting. The webcast can be found on the Committee’s web site. Although a transcript of the proceedings (and any supplemental questions and answers) are not yet available, when they are published, they should appear in the Government Printing Office’s repository: House Committee on the Judiciary: Hearings – 112th Congress.

Testifying before the Subcommittee were Hon. John Morton, Director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; Floyd Abrams, a First Amendment expert who testified on his own behalf; Kent Walker, Senior Vice President and General Counsel for Google; and Christine Jones, Executive Vice President and General Counsel for the GoDaddy Group. (Their prepared remarks can be found by following the links associated with each of their names.)

At the opening of the hearing, Rep. Goodlatte (Va.) explained the basic purpose of the hearing (to examine methods of theft online) and clarified a misunderstanding that had arisen after the last hearing on March 14. He explained that although ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) had seized domain names in the recent few months, those seizures were based on existing law – particularly the Pro-IP Act enacted several years ago.

In contrast, this hearing and any proposed legislation resulting from it was intended to find new tools to address theft online — existing laws did not provide enough enforcement tools. Many of the websites being discussed as “rogue” websites in these hearings are foreign-based and/or -operated. Thus, there is no property in the U.S. at issue, and the sites could not simply be “seized” by ICE. He concluded, “any efforts to pass new legislation will not be based on seizure laws and process because there is no property in the U.S. to be seized. Thus, new tools are needed to address theft online.” (All of the quotes taken from the hearing for this blog post are paraphrased, not exact transcriptions, as a transcript is not yet available. But, they’re close.)

Rep. Watt (N.C.) put the discussion into a neat container: we need to deter “theft of products online as we protected against theft of property on the ground. What might romantically be referred to as ‘piracy,’ we refer in my neighborhood as ‘theft’ or simply, ‘stealing.'”

Rep. Conyers (Mich.) asked simply: “Why don’t we just cut off all the money? Why don’t we eliminate some of the financial incentives by cutting off the funding from customer through the payment processing system, or cut off the funding from some of the advertising networks?” He also suggested considering a private right of action, noting that the suggestion was “almost unheard of.” Finally, he admonished that “[w]e need to use this hearing as another opportunity to come up with some legislation we can be proud of.”

Following these introductions, each of the witnesses was given five minutes to summarize the testimony that they had prepared, and proceeded to answer questions posed to them by the participating representatives of the House. The hearing lasted about 3½ hours, and it’s impossible to do it complete justice here. The questions and answers, and the various speeches made by some participants, were detailed and enthusiastic. I’d encourage you to watch the whole thing.

In the meantime, some highlights:

ICE Director John Morton expressed great concern that all of American industry is “under assault” right now and repeatedly argued that government enforcement should only be one “tool in the toolbox,” but simply could not address effectively every act of infringement or counterfeiting. Industry has to be involved. In essence, he said, “[w]hat you’ve heard, though, is that industry can do a lot more, on a greater scale than the government ever can. We are part of the solution, we are not THE solution, not by a long shot.” He further explained the context in which the ICE domain seizures had occurred, noting that they were made under existing legislation, but are ineffective against a foreign website with foreign operators, because of jurisdictional limits.

Floyd Abrams, Esquire, addressed applicable First Amendment principles and recommended that any legislation must be narrowly drafted so that it’s addressing only those sites that are “all but totally infringing. . . . if the entity is nothing but a transmitter of infringing products, you are permitted to deal with it as long as the remedy is not overbroad.” He recommended that the Committee use existing regimes such as Rule 65 (of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure) governing injunctions and temporary restraining orders and the Copyright Law’s enforcement mechanisms, and not to “start from scratch.”

Kent Walker, Esquire, explained Google’s point of view, and responded to numerous questions throughout the hearing. Specifically, he testified:

  • That the DMCA process was sufficient because it “strikes right balance between free speech and rightsholders.”
  • That creating a private right of action should be discouraged because it would allow individuals to “shake-down companies that are making legitimate efforts to comply.”
  • That Google’s efforts have already been successful and Google was already doing what it could.
  • That Google does not want to be in the position of being “judge, jury or executioner” in deciding what content was infringing or pirated. Instead, he advocated for significant cooperation with the content industry, so that the content industry could identify which web sites contained infringing works or counterfeit products.
  • He discouraged the imposition of any new burdens and explained that each method of combating infringement (whether through AdWords/AdSense campaigns on the advertising side or Google’s AutoComplete function and display of results on the searching side) that had been proposed during the hearing was overbroad.
  • He denied that Google had benefited from “illicit websites” through advertising revenue: “These sites cost us money, sir. They cost us money to get rid of them, they cost us money when we find them and we have to refund money to advertisers. They cost us money when they use fake credit cards or stolen credit cards to pay for what they’re doing. We have no interest in having advertising on these sites. We have no interest in having advertising leading to these sites.”
  • Discussing some practical differences between infringers and counterfeiters, which necessitate different enforcement efforts, he explained:
    • The infringers (generally) had no trouble drawing traffic to their sites because they were offering content for free – their way of making money on these sites was through advertising, which could only be profitable if more people were drawn to their sites.
    • The counterfeiters (generally) were selling products and making money, but they needed to drive traffic so that more sales could be made.
  • He recommended “cutting off the money to these guys, cutting off the advertising . . . [and] the financial services. When you talk about cutting off the pure search side of it, the risk is that you are both overbroad and ultimately ineffective in” eliminating the bad conduct.
  • He proposed a limited definition of “rogue website” be used to define sites that were subject to takedown or other sanctions under this legislation. He suggested: “1) that the site is knowingly violating copyright law; 2) that it contains complete copies of works or counterfeit goods; 3) that it has a commercial purpose; and 4) it refuses to respond when notified by rightsholders. Within that construct, we’re comfortable with the notion that the site is dedicated to infringement.”

Ms. Jones agreed that input from the content industry was critical, but argued that it did not end the analysis:

  • “Like Google and others, we do rely on the content industry to let us know when they find things that are inappropriate.”
  • She argued that it was necessary to go further, and achieve cooperation from the other participants in the “broader Internet ecosystem” to make it very difficult for infringers and counterfeiters to achieve profits in the US market.
  • Continued assistance from law enforcement was critical to the success of any multi-pronged attack.
  • Made some concrete recommendations to combat these rogue sites: 1) “follow the money”; 2) “shut down all chokepoints in the system because we have to disincentivize the bad actors”; and 3) “take away ability to search for, pay for, and ship counterfeit goods.”
  • Recommended that any new legislation in this area should not be limited to a specific technology or a specific means of infringing, but instead focus on “top-level concepts.” In other words, there will be technologies in the future that we cannot contemplate now – any legislation should be careful to address the conduct, and not the method of infringing or delivering the counterfeits.
  • Suggested that a safe harbor be provided to protect industry participants from liability if they complied with the new statute’s requirements.
  • Also advocated in favor of penalties that should be assessed against those who do not comply: “Unless and until we provide a consequence for businesses who facilitate criminals, there will always be criminals who can find a safe harbor [I think she meant “safe haven” here].”

Reaction by various members of the Committee was mixed, and they had their own suggestions of how an enforcement tool could be fashioned and provided observations of some of the challenges to be faced. Among them:

  • Rep. Lofgren (Cal.): She explained that she was reminded “how useful it might be to have some of the big tech presences engaged in deep conversations with content holders who are understandably concerned about what’s happening to them. That might yield a successful result that might be far superior than what the non-engineers in the Congress might craft.”
  • Rep. Berman (Cal.): Responding to Mr. Walker’s suggestion that the DMCA was adequate to address these concerns, he explained, “if that legislation were really working, I don’t think we’d be having this hearing. I don’t think there’d be a Senate Bill. I don’t think Customs would be undertaking the initiatives it’s undertaking.” At base, however, “billions of dollars and thousands of jobs were being lost because of digital theft and we’re focused on trying to do something about it.”
  • Rep. Wasserman-Schultz (Fla.): Expressed concern about the length of time over which Google continues to allow web sites to remain (for instance on its Blogger site) even after receiving a takedown notice. She asked that Rep. Goodlatte include in his investigation an analysis of the amount of time it reasonably takes to act on takedown notices under the DMCA.
  • Rep. Sanchez (Cal.): Suggested that ICE direct its symposiums in public education to a younger audience, the ones who might be participating in the infringement, instead of focusing on industry leaders, government officials and congressional staff, as these would already be on board with the concept that this conduct must stop.
  • Rep. Jackson Lee (Tx): Asked whether Google has a team or department that deals with implementing the takedowns under the DMCA, as they could give input into crafting the legislation. [Mr. Walker responded that they had such a group of people and they’d be happy to work with the Committee.]

Many more thoughtful comments and suggestions were made by other members of the Committee and the witnesses, and I again encourage you to watch the webcast.

Finally, while it is not clear what the Subcommittee will do with all of this information and these suggestions, Mr. Adams had the right approach when he suggested, “all we can do is everything we can to drain the actions of this sort of the profits that have been building up over the years, and increasing more and more as time passes.” As Director Morton opined, ” We have to do something. My perspective is, do nothing and you fail.”

Prior posts in this blog on other hearings on a potential, new COICA bill (Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act) can be found under the label COICA.

District Court Rejects Proposed GoogleBooks Settlement

by Christina Frangiosa


On March 22, 2011, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York issued its long-awaited opinion on whether to approve the settlement tentatively entered into between the Authors’ Guild and Google regarding its GoogleBooks program. In short, the Court rejected the settlement.

Reviewing the docket confirms that this case has indeed been relatively quiet since the February 18, 2010 hearing on the proposed settlement. Shortly thereafter, some modifications were made to the cash payment system terms, but otherwise, the Court did not issue any final ruling to approve or reject the proposed settlement.

In its Opinion, the Court announced, “The question presented is whether the ASA [Amended Settlement Agreement] is fair, adequate, and reasonable. I conclude that it is not.” Opinion at 1. The Court explained,

“While the digitization of books and the creation of a universal digital library would benefit many, the ASA would simply go too far. It would permit this class action . . . to implement a forward-looking business arrangement that would grant Google significant rights to exploit entire books, without permission of the copyright owners. Indeed, the ASA would give Google a significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case.”

Id. at 1-2 (emphasis added).

In its analysis, the Court outlined seven categories of objections to the ASA: 1) adequacy of class notice; 2) adequacy of class representation; 3) scope of relief under Rule 23; 4) copyright concerns; 5) antitrust concerns; 6) privacy concerns; and 7) international law concerns. Id. at 10-13. It handled each category in turn.

Adequacy of Representation
As to adequacy of representation, Judge Chen pointed out repeatedly (Opinion at 10, 19) that over 6800 class members have opted out to date from participation in the proposed settlement, an “extremely high number.” He concluded that “there is a substantial question as to the existence of antagonistic interests between named plaintiffs and certain members of the class,” a prong in the analysis that must be met in order to comply with Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. He agreed that counsel was sufficiently qualified to represent the class, but concluded that the differences between the various competing interests within the class was “troubling.” Id. at 21.

ASA Exceeded Scope of Rule 23 Remedy
As to whether the settlement exceeds “the scope of what the Court may permit under Rule 23,” Judge Chen concluded that it would. The exact language of the Opinion is worth reciting in explanation here:

“This case was brought to challenge Google’s use of ‘snippets,’ as plaintiffs alleged that Google’s scanning of books and display of snippets for online searching constituted copyright infringement. Google defended by arguing that it was permitted by the fair use doctrine to make available small portions of such works in response to search requests. There was no allegation that Google was making full books available online, and the case was not about full access to copyrighted works. The case was about the use of an indexing and searching tool, not the sale of complete copyrighted work.”

Id. at 24-25 (emphasis added).

The Opinion explains further, “Google did not scan the books to make them available for purchase, and, indeed, Google would have no colorable defense to a claim of infringement based on the unauthorized copyright and selling or other exploitation of entire copyrighted books.” Id. at 26. Thus, the ASA, which created a structure by which revenues from sales of full copies of copyrighted works would be shared with the appropriate rightsholders, goes far beyond what the parties litigated and the scope of relief that the Court has the ability to approve.

The Court did not leave the parties without a remedy. Instead, it merely concluded that a Court-approved settlement between these two parties (to cover this broad set of class members) was not the proper vehicle to address this kind of forward-looking relationship; Congress is. Id. at 22-24. For instance, “[t]he questions of who should be entrusted with guardianship over orphan books, under what terms, and with what safeguards are matters more appropriately decided by Congress than through an agreement among private, self-interested parties.” Id. at 23.

The Court criticized Google’s method of reaching the costly investment that it has clearly made in this process, and concluding that it need not countenance Google’s activities:

“Yet, the ASA would grant Google the right to sell full access to copyrighted works that it otherwise would have no right to exploit. . . . The ASA would grant Google control over the digital commercialization of millions of books, including orphan books and other unclaimed works. . . . And it would do so even though Google engaged in wholesale, blatant copying, without first obtaining copyright permissions. While its competitors went through the ‘painstaking’ and ‘costly’ process of obtaining permissions before scanning copyrighted books, Google by comparison took a shortcut by copying anything and everything regardless of copyright status. . . . As one objector put it: ‘Google pursued its copyright project in calculated disregard of authors’ rights. Its business plan was: “So sue me”.’ “

Id. at 26-27 (citations omitted to statements made in various submissions filed with the Court) (emphasis added).

Settlement Applies to Future Rights
The Court also concluded that while it is common for certain class members to opt out of participating in a settlement, this case is unique in that not only does the settlement release claims against Google for past behavior, class members here “would be giving up certain property rights in their creative works, and they would be deemed – by their silence – to have granted Google a license to future use of their copyrighted works.” Id. at 30. Such a mandated transfer of exclusive copyright rights is unwarranted.

Opt-Out Structure Unsound
In various places in the opinion, the Court pointed out that “opting out” is not the right structure for an agreement with such a broad application. “[I]t is incongruous with the purpose of the copyright laws to place the onus on copyright owners to come forward to protect their rights when Google copied their works without first seeking their permission.” Id. at 35 (footnote omitted).

ASA Raises Antitrust Problems
Judge Chen concluded that the ASA would indeed grant Google a monopoly over unclaimed works, and agreed with the argument made by counsel for the Internet Archive: “the ASA would give Google a right, which no one else in the world would have, . . . to digitize works with impunity, without any risk of statutory liability, for something like 150 years.” Id. at 36-37. The Opinion gives other examples of potential anti-competitive benefits that Google would obtain if this settlement were to have been approved.

Privacy Concerns
While the Court acknowledged that the privacy concerns outlined by various objectors to the settlement were “real,” Judge Chen concluded that they were not a sufficient basis on their own to reject the proposed settlement. Id. at 39. As a result, the objections are not summarized here.

International Objections
The Opinion also discusses the objections raised by various international stakeholders, such as authors, publishers, foreign governments, and other associations, and concludes that these objections highlight precisely why creating such a forward-thinking framework should be left for Congress. Id. at 45. For example, Germany argued, “Courts and class action settlements are not the proper province for creating a cutting edge copyright . . . framework to bind future generations of digital libraries.” Id. at 44 (ECF No. 852 at 11).

Conclusion
This blog post only discusses certain highlights from the Court’s opinion, but the importance and complexity of this debate cannot be understated. Various competing interests are triggered that belie any “easy” or “all encompassing” solution, such as:

  • The interests of the public in having full access to as much information as possible in our digital world;
  • The interests of academic authors who want to “maximize access to knowledge” (Opinion at 28-29)
  • The interests of authors of older works still protected by copyright law, who may want to see a resurgence of interest in their works, but print copies may be off the market or the publisher can no longer be located to negotiate additional distribution rights;
  • The rights of authors and publishers of newer works to control how their works are distributed; and
  • Google’s interest in recovering some part of its massive investment in enabling digital access to contents of the world’s libraries.

Also critical to understand is the fact that this ASA, whether it ever obtains approval or not, does not affect the public’s access to works that are already in the public domain, such as by Mark Twain or Charles Dickens, or works that are subject to specific agreements between Google and the rightsholders (i.e., when the rightsholders opted in to Google’s efforts to scan works).

While ultimately rejecting the ASA as “not fair, adequate and reasonable,” Judge Chen suggested that as many “objectors have noted, many of the concerns raised in the objections would be ameliorated if the ASA were converted from an ‘opt-out’ settlement to an ‘opt-in’ settlement. . . . I urge the parties to consider revising the ASA accordingly.” Id. at 46.
An opt-in structure may have its own problems, however, as highlighted by the initial comments posted only to the March 23 Wall Street Journal article on the rejection of the settlement. Efrati, Amir and Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, Judge Rejects Google Books Settlement, Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2011 (this may only be available to paid subscribers). Note that the article contains a survey to solicit views of whether an “opt-in” or “opt-out” structure should be used. Once you vote, you can see the results. There’s also a video explaining some of the concerns, which suggests that this opinion has dealt a “blow” to Google and that it remains to be seen what a future settlement agreement might look like.
Prior posts about the Google Book Settlement can be found here.

House Judiciary Committee Holds Hearing on Online Infringement

by Christina Frangiosa


The House of Representatives’ Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet (which is a subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary) held a hearing on March 14, 2011 entitled “Promoting Investment and Protecting Commerce Online:  Legitimate Sites v. Parasites, Part I,” addressing how to combat online infringement by rogue websites.

While I have not yet watched the webcast available on the Committee’s web site, an article by the Bureau of National Affairs suggests that the hearing was devoted to the same kind of inquiry that the Senate Judiciary Committee considered last month, and thus raises questions about what a revised COICA bill could look like. (For a discussion of the Senate’s hearing, see my prior blog post.) The BNA article reported that Rep. John Conyers, Jr. “lashed out at the witnesses [toward the end of the hearing] and expressed his profound disappointment at what he perceived is a dearth of suggestions for action that Congress could take to address the problem being addressed.”

The witnesses who testified during the hearing and provided written remarks were Maria A. Pallante (Acting Register of Copyrights, U.S. Copyright Office), David Sohn (Senior Policy Counsel, Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT)), Daniel Castro (Senior Analyst, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF)) and Frederick Huntsberry (Chief Operating Officer, Paramount Pictures).  Their written remarks are available on the Committee’s site.

As of this writing, a date for the second part of this hearing has not yet been posted to the Committee’s site.

White House Releases Recommendations for IP Enforcement

by Christina Frangiosa


On March 15, 2011, Victoria Espinel, the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC) released the Administration’s “White Paper” making recommendations about changes to existing legislation that it believes are required in order to protect intellectual property rightsholders and consumers from counterfeit or illegal products and from economic espionage. The Administration’s White Paper can be found here and its blog post summarizing its conclusions can be found here.

The White Paper targeted several areas for modification: 1) increasing statutory maximum penalties for economic espionage (18 U.S.C. § 1831) and for drug offenses under the Federal Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act; 2) increasing U.S. Sentencing Guidelines for intellectual property offenses; 3) enhancing specific enforcement powers of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its “component” U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP); 4) permitting DHS to share information with rightsholders about seizures of infringing goods and/or circumvention devices; 5) increasing enforcement tools regarding counterfeit pharmaceuticals and illegal online pharmacies; and 6) increasing certain administrative penalties that the CBP can impose.

Many of the recommendations focused on conforming available penalties for particular crimes involving intellectual property and counterfeit drugs, rather than focusing on enhancing private rightsholders’ abilities to address and combat specific infringing acts. As a result, these initiatives seem to have little impact on U.S. companies’ efforts to self-police. Perhaps there is more to come on this point.

The White Paper also acknowledged the Senate’s efforts to prepare and introduce a new version of COICA (the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, previously introduced as S. 3804 in the previous Congress), for which the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on February 16, 2011 (webcast available).  More information about COICA as originally introduced and the recent Senate Hearing is described here.

Specifically, the White Paper acknowledges:

“Piracy and counterfeiting in the online environment are significant concerns for the Administration. They cause economic harm and threaten the health and safety of American consumers. Foreign-based and foreign-controlled websites and web services raise particular concerns for U.S. enforcement efforts. We are aware that members of Congress share our goal of reducing online infringement and are considering measures to increase law enforcement authority to combat websites that are used to distribute or provide access to infringing products. We look forward to working with Congress on those efforts and the recommendations contained in this paper in the coming year.”

White Paper at 1.  The blog also highlights a combined effort of several private companies (including Google, GoDaddy, and MasterCard) to create a non-profit organization to fight illegal online pharmacies. A prior blog post (February 7, 2011) identifies additional details about the “Voluntary Private Sector Action”, with an additional list of participants (American Express, eNom, GoDaddy, Google, MasterCard, Microsoft, PayPal, Neustar, Visa, and Yahoo!) and notes that “By preventing criminal actors from gaining access to consumers and attaining legitimacy through the use of online payment processors, the purchase of ad space or a registered domain name, these private companies can play a critical role in combating illegal online pharmacies that put American consumers at risk.” This effort is laudable in that it seeks to prevent particularly dangerous counterfeits with substantial health risks from entering the U.S. market, but its limitation to such a narrow window of counterfeiting means that companies are still left to their own devices to police markets for counterfeit products and grey goods on their own, and create their own enforcement tools.

Finally, the White Paper suggests changes to Copyright law, to permit illegal streaming to qualify as a felony. Thus, the Administration advocates updating criminal enforcement tools to take into account new technologies as they are developed. Again, this is a laudable effort, but does not provide private rightsholders with any additional mechanism to combat infringement and counterfeiting outside of criminal investigations involving an already overloaded criminal justice system.

Senate Judiciary Committee Considering New COICA Bill

by Christina Frangiosa


On February 16, 2011, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a public hearing entitled “Targeting Websites Dedicated to Stealing American IP.” Witnesses testifying before the Committee included Tom Adams (President and CEO, Rosetta Stone), Scott Turow (President, Authors Guild), Christine N. Jones (EVP, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, The Go Daddy Group, Inc.), Thomas M. Dailey (Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Verizon), and Denise Yee (Senior Trademark Counsel, Visa, Inc.). Representatives for both Google and Yahoo were invited to attend, but declined to appear. As of this writing, a webcast (lasting the entire 2 hours of the hearing) is still available.

Based on the remarks made during the hearing, it appears that the Committee is considering introducing a modified version of the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) that had been introduced in the last term as S. 3804 (and passed the Committee on a 19-0 vote). The Second Session of the 111th Congress ended before further action was taken on this Bill. (Summary of the status of the bill can be found here, along with a copy of the related Committee Report submitted by Sen. Leahy on December 17, 2010.)

By congressional rules, this Bill must be re-introduced in this Congress (the 112th Congress) before any further action can be taken on it. Given the amount of public comment that the Committee received in connection with the most recent version of the Bill, and given the tenor of the comments during the February 16 hearing, it is likely that the re-introduced Bill will have some important differences from last term’s Bill. Some of the issues that may be addressed in this Bill could be a private right of action, removal of a “black list” onto which “bad” websites could be placed and some measure of safe harbor provided for the ISPs and/or other service providers who comply with the regulatory provisions of the new Bill. (For more comments on some of these provisions and their expected impact, see the comments of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (as well as additional links provided on their page) and the Center for Democracy and Technology (again, including some of the cross links within their blog relating to Digital Copyright). Of course, without seeing an actual draft yet, it is difficult to predict which provisions will end up in a new version of the Bill, if introduced this term.

During the hearing, several Senators referred to a second round of questions/comments on this initiative, which suggests that the Committee may hold a follow-up hearing. As of this writing, I could not find a scheduled hearing to re-address a potential COICA draft. At the end of the hearing, Senator Leahy commented that COICA in the last term had bipartisan support and passed in the Committee on a vote of 19-0. He closed with a promise that some version of this Bill will be reintroduced in the current term.

After the hearing concluded, Senator Leahy posted a press release that identified some of the comments that both he and other Committee members have received in support of a bill to stop counterfeiting on the Internet. (Copies of the submissions were also provided in the press release and can be found separately here.) Ranking Member Sen. Grassley’s prepared remarks can be found on the hearing summary page, and also in his own list of press releases.