{"id":4040,"date":"2016-09-26T05:00:15","date_gmt":"2016-09-26T09:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cpip.gmu.edu\/?p=4040"},"modified":"2026-02-03T21:07:24","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T21:07:24","slug":"criminal-copyright-infringement-is-crime-of-moral-turpitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/2016\/09\/26\/criminal-copyright-infringement-is-crime-of-moral-turpitude\/","title":{"rendered":"[Archived Post] Criminal Copyright Infringement is Crime of “Moral Turpitude”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted<\/a> from the Law Theories blog.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"sheetThis past Friday, the Board of Immigration Appeals held<\/a> that criminal copyright infringement constitutes a \u201ccrime involving moral turpitude\u201d under immigration law. The Board reasoned that criminal copyright infringement is inherently immoral because it involves the willful theft of property and causes harm to both the copyright owner and society.<\/p>\n

The respondent, Raul Zaragoza-Vaquero, was indicted<\/a> in 2012 for selling illicit CDs of popular artists including Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, and Jennifer Lopez over a five-year period. After a three-day trial, the jury found Zaragoza-Vaquero guilty<\/a> of criminal copyright infringement under Section 506(a)(1)(A)<\/a>, which makes it a crime to \u201cwillfully\u201d infringe \u201cfor purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain.\u201d The crime was a felony under Section 2319(b)(1)<\/a> because it involved the \u201creproduction or distribution, . . . during any 180-day period, of at least 10 copies or phonorecords, of 1 or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of more than $2,500.\u201d Zaragoza-Vaquero was sentenced<\/a> to 33 months in prison and ordered to pay $36,000 in restitution.<\/p>\n

Under immigration law<\/a>, an alien who has been ordered removed from the United States may ask the Attorney General to cancel the removal order. However, there is an exception<\/a> for \u201cany alien convicted of . . . a crime involving moral turpitude,\u201d in which case the Attorney General is powerless to cancel the removal. Zaragoza-Vaquero was ordered removed in early 2015, and the Immigration Judge pretermitted his application to have the removal order cancelled by the Attorney General. The Immigration Judge held that criminal copyright infringement is a \u201ccrime involving moral turpitude,\u201d thus making Zaragoza-Vaquero ineligible for such cancellation. On appeal, the Board agreed, rejecting Zaragoza-Vaquero’s bid to have the Attorney General consider his removal.<\/p>\n

Even though crimes of \u201cmoral turpitude\u201d have been removable offenses since 1891<\/a>, Congress has never defined what the phrase means nor listed the crimes that qualify. That job instead has been left to immigration judges and the federal courts. In 1951, the U.S. Supreme Court noted<\/a> that \u201ccrimes in which fraud was an ingredient have always been regarded as involving moral turpitude.\u201d Indeed, many property crimes have been held to involve \u201cmoral turpitude\u201d when committed willfully because there is the criminal intent to defraud the property owner of its rights. \u201cMoral turpitude\u201d has thus been found to exist in numerous crimes against property, including arson, burglary, embezzlement, extortion, blackmail, bribery, false pretenses, forgery, larceny, receiving or transporting stolen goods, and check or credit card fraud.<\/p>\n

Crimes against intellectual property have likewise been found to involve \u201cmoral turpitude.\u201d For example, the Ninth Circuit held<\/a> in 2008 that the use of counterfeit marks, in violation of state law, is \u201ca crime involving moral turpitude because it is an inherently fraudulent crime.\u201d The Ninth Circuit reasoned: \u201cEither an innocent purchaser is tricked into buying a fake item; or even if the purchaser knows the item is counterfeit, the owner of the mark has been robbed of its value. The crime is really a species of theft. . . . The commission of the crime necessarily defrauds the owner of the mark, or an innocent purchaser of the counterfeit items, or both.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly, the Board of Immigration Appeals held<\/a> in 2007 that trafficking in counterfeit goods, in violation of federal law, is a crime of \u201cmoral turpitude.\u201d The Board reasoned that the conviction required the federal prosecutor to prove that the defendant \u201cintentionally trafficked\u201d and \u201cknowingly used a spurious trademark that was likely to confuse or deceive others.\u201d Even though the statute did not require proof that the defendant had the specific intent to defraud, the Board held that such trafficking involved \u201cmoral turpitude\u201d because it is “inherently immoral” to willfully exploit the property owner and the public.<\/p>\n

Turning back to Zaragoza-Vaquero, the Board defined<\/a> \u201cmoral turpitude\u201d as \u201cconduct that shocks the public conscience as being inherently base, vile, or depraved, and contrary to accepted rules of morality and the duties owed between persons or to society in general.\u201d The Board then noted that trafficking in counterfeit goods has been held to be a crime of \u201cmoral turpitude\u201d because it involves (1) \u201ctheft of someone else\u2019s property,\u201d (2) \u201cproof of intent to traffic,\u201d (3) \u201csocietal harm,\u201d and (4) \u201cdishonest dealing and deliberate exploitation of the public and the mark owner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reasoning by analogy to these trafficking cases, the Board ultimately held that criminal copyright infringement “must also be a crime involving moral turpitude.\u201d Criminal copyright infringement statutes \u201cwere enacted to protect a form of intellectual property,\u201d and offenses \u201cmust be committed willfully, meaning that a defendant must voluntarily and intentionally violate a known legal duty not to infringe a copyright.\u201d The Board noted that criminal copyright infringement \u201calso involves significant societal harm,\u201d since \u201cpiracy\u201d has \u201charmed the film and recording industries, including actors, artists, and musicians.\u201d It pointed to a recent report<\/a> by the Government Accountability Office, which found that \u201cintellectual property crimes cause negative effects on health, safety, and lost revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Board\u2019s holding that criminal copyright infringement is a crime of \u201cmoral turpitude\u201d thus extends the long line of cases finding that crimes against property are inherently immoral when the criminal intentionally defrauds the owner of its rights. While many will surely balk at the suggestion that there\u2019s anything immoral about criminal copyright infringement, I think the Board reached the right conclusion\u2014both in the moral and legal sense. A defendant such as Zaragoza-Vaquero, who for years willfully infringed for profit, has acted in a way that shocks the conscience and has shown a conscious disregard for the rights of others. And while prosecutors need not show the specific intent to defraud in securing such a conviction, the element of willfulness suffices to establish the intent to defraud the copyright owner of its property.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-posted from the Law Theories blog. This past Friday, the Board of Immigration Appeals held that criminal copyright infringement constitutes a \u201ccrime involving moral turpitude\u201d under immigration law. The Board reasoned that criminal copyright infringement is inherently immoral because it involves the willful theft of property and causes harm to both the copyright owner and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3627,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,23,53,1],"tags":[213,337,362,376,378,427,685,697,713,871,975,1376,1569],"class_list":["post-4040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-copyright","category-infringement","category-trademarks","category-uncategorized","tag-board-of-immigration-appeals","tag-copyright-2","tag-counterfeit-mark","tag-criminal-copyright-infringement","tag-criminal-intent","tag-devlin-hartline","tag-immigration-law","tag-infringement","tag-intent-to-defraud","tag-law-theories","tag-moral-turpitude","tag-specific-intent","tag-willfully"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3627"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4040"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15847,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4040\/revisions\/15847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uakron.edu\/ualawip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}