The Internet Privacy Act is a non-existent and fictitious

law Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vari ...

cited by websites that conduct illegal activities in order to deter organizations that look to prosecute such activities. Networks which share music, films and software, for example, often display the fictitious act in an attempt to protect themselves from arrest by being able to claim

entrapment Entrapment is a practice in which a law enforcement agent or agent of the state induces a person to commit a "crime" that the person would have otherwise been unlikely or unwilling to commit.''Sloane'' (1990) 49 A Crim R 270. See also agent prov ...

in court. In the statement, websites claim that it prevents organizations which may be associated with anti-P2P or government organizations from entering the site or network as it would breach the terms of the act. Internet Privacy Act 431.322.12
According to the statement which many sites display, it was signed by

Bill Clinton William Jefferson Clinton (Birth name, né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 ...

in 1995, but in reality he never signed the act as it never existed. Using this and other such "disclaimers" would actually make it easier for such a site to be found via the major search engines. The text notice on these sites are usually as follows, but can vary:

History of usage

The false act was first displayed during the late 1990s on many sites that engaged in illegal activities, such as the promotion and distribution of "knock-off" (

counterfeit To counterfeit means to imitate something authentic, with the intent to steal, destroy, or replace the original, for use in illegal transactions, or otherwise to deceive individuals into believing that the fake is of equal or greater value tha ...

) materials. Over time, the paragraph was picked up and copied and pasted with the exception of a few minor variations to match the content of the containing website. An example is provided below: Through the turn of the century, thousands of web,

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...

, and other sites used the statement in an attempt to deter authorities. It is sometimes still seen in modern file sharing networks and protocols. Other reasons for it might have been to reassure the visiting public that their actions and data would be somehow protected.

References

{{Refend File sharing Urban legends Copyright infringement Fictional laws