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MPAA, Microsoft Testify Piracy Funds Terrorism
GuyMannDude writes "[Yesterday's] Oversight Hearing on "International Copyright Piracy: Links to Organized Crime and Terrorism" featured the MPAA and Microsoft testifying that software and movie DVD counterfeiting is an acute problem, with criminal gangs operating factories in Russia, Malaysia and other countries that have weak copyright laws. They further claim that intellectual property piracy is a vehicle for financing or supporting acts of terror." There's another article about the hearing at Infoworld.
Yeah and Osama Bin Laden is sittin in a cave in Afghanistan with a buncha cds and a burner!
How does stealing something for free FUND terrorism? It can't. Lesson here kiddies, it's okay to steal for free. Don't be stupid and buy things.
This just in:
Breathing supports terrorism. Scientists have just discovered that if you breath oxygen, you are in fact taking away necessary, life giving resources, namely oxygen from those who fight the terrorists.
The public is now being asked to refrain from breathing so that the counter-terrorists do not run out of oxygen (although is was also recommended that if you are around any terrorist you should try to use as much oxygen as possible, because we believe that terrorists also use oxygen to live).
sin(6cos(r)+5A)
If you can download it for free, that would undercut the piracy market which is funding terrorist.
Put your wares online for America!
Because, with all the money saved on a pirated copy of MS Office, you can afford to go on vacation.
If Microsoft and the MPAA were to release everything under the public domain, there would be nothing to pirate. Ergo, terrorism would end.
Seems like a good solution for everyone. Microsoft and the MPAA, I implore you to end terrorism! Only you can do it!
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I like to listen to mp3's and watch SVCD's in my SUV while I am high.
So, driving to work in my Lincoln Navigator while smoking dope and listening to my pirated copy of Rage Against the Machine was probably not the best way to start the day?
Milo
is that you should create your own pirate copies at home, rather than chance buying a pirate copy that could fund terrorism.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Education is the silver bullet.
This doesn't surprise me one bit.
In the early 1980s, I tried a similar tactic with my parents. I was hooked on video games, and attempted to explain that if I didn't get an Atari 2600, they'd be funding terrorism.
I also explained the lack of quarters for the Aladdin's Castle in the mall was probably funding terrorism. When I wanted a TRS-80 Model I Level II computer and my parents refused, I urged them to rethink their stance. "Not buying the computer probably means you're funding terrorism."
My dad looked at me, told me to go to my room and not come out for a while. From behind my bedroom door, I yelled out that by grounding me, they were supporting the Soviets in Afghanistan. By not purchasing the Mattel 'Big Trak' remote control car I coveted, they were essentially supporting the Argentinians in the Falkland Island dispute. But they held firm.
When, many years later, my parents refused to fund the purchase of my first automoble (a little Buick Opel), I wondered whether or not their recalcitrance wasn't actually helping Manuel Noreiga in Panama. I explained that by refusing to do what I asked was probably assisting rogue regimes across the globe.
And now, take a look around. The North Koreans are threatening to rain missiles down on America's cities. Sadaam Hussein is sitting in his bunker with some sweet tea, watching Tony Blair struggle for his political life. General Idi Amin Dada is still exiled in Saudi Arabia, but I'm betting he's got a funding pipeline that comes directly from all those times my parents refused to give me five dollar bills so that I could go to Aladdin's Castle and get the five extra tokens when you stuck a five dollar bill in the cash machine.
The rise of rogue regimes is the direct results of doing things I didn't want done. Microsoft is absolutely right.
"If you can download it for free, that would undercut the piracy market which is funding terrorist. "
Heh funny as that comment is, there's a good point to be made here. The MPAA should not call online trading piracy if they're going to associate it with terrorism that way.
Or should we just sling it right back at them?
"The MPAA funds terrorism by making movies available."
...if only our elected officials had the cojones to say it out loud.
The black market in software and pirated DVDs only exists because there is a profit to be made by selling those pirated items.
If you make it possible to obtain those items without paying for them (i.e. P2P networks), then there's no profit to be made by selling individual discs!
Thus: Napster, Kazaa, and Gnutella are fighting the war on terror!