Online piracy steals American jobs

The past few years have been difficult for many Americans and American companies as the U.S faced a deep recession. But many American companies have been struggling against an even greater threat: foreign rogue websites that steal American intellectual property, and then sell those fake products back to American consumers.

Just last year, the global sales of counterfeit goods online from illegitimate retailers reached $135 billion. That's money that could have been used to bolster our economy or preserve and create new jobs here at home.

Rosetta Stone is one of far too many companies that has been affected by rampant online piracy. We began a small, family-owned business in Harrisonburg dedicated to helping people unlock language-learning success. Now available in more than 30 languages, our educational and interactive tools help schools, the U.S. armed forces, government agencies, corporations and millions of individuals throughout the world learn to communicate with each other.

Rosetta Stone's legacy of achievement and innovation continues today thanks to our more than 1,800 hardworking employees, the majority of whom are in the Shenandoah Valley — the very same employees whose jobs are under attack by foreign criminals seeking to profit from the heavy investment in our brand and our intellectual property.

Rogue websites are often sophisticated sites that appear legitimate but are actually criminal enterprises that sell dangerous counterfeit products such as prescription drugs, faulty electronics and pirated software.

In our case, rogue sites copy Rosetta Stone language-learning software and resell it to unsuspecting consumers. These pirates copy pages from Rosetta Stone's websites and launch their own sites with deceptively similar formats. And because no laws currently exist to effectively halt such theft by foreign criminals, rogue sites can advertise to American consumers online.

Like many other American companies, Rosetta Stone devotes significant resources to combating such sites. Unfortunately, our efforts are undermined by companies that profit from online advertising.

Although we constantly provide online advertisers such as Google with notices to remove rogue website ads, certain advertisers continue to transact with foreign criminals and permit new ads to be displayed. After all, advertisers make hundreds of millions of dollars each year selling ads to illegal sites.

Federal legislation is needed to halt the scourge of online piracy. Two bills currently pending in Congress, the Senate's PROTECT IP Act and the House's Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), would root out foreign rogue sites and would stop online advertisers from continuing to profit from advertising counterfeit goods to American consumers.

These bills are crucial to protecting American jobs and the economy by taking tangible, real action against foreign rogue websites that traffic in stolen creative works. The bills would also help stop paid online ads from illegally using the brand names of Rosetta Stone and other U.S. companies and would stop such ads from easily reaching American consumers.

It is not surprising that opponents to PROTECT IP Act and SOPA include major search engines and online advertisers who benefit financially from rogue sites. The same opponents are attempting to confuse policymakers and the public by inaccurately claiming the legislation represents censorship that will "break the Internet" and stifle innovation.

These dire predictions have been made in the past regarding content protection laws, despite the fact that there has been an explosion of free speech and innovation on the Internet.

The truth is, American companies need Congress' help to protect home-grown intellectual property from foreign thieves. We must encourage Congress to pass this vital legislation so that American companies can return to business as usual by devoting their valuable resources to innovation, their employees and, ultimately, growth.