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.

Comments

I'm just not sure which way I want to fund terror

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, sure, I can buy drugs, or pirate music/movies/games. But, I can also drive an SUV, or use oil in other ways. I can also support terror by being critical of the government, or being supportive of the use of encryption and privacy. I mean, so many options, so much terror. Where does one start?

Bullshiiiiiiitttttt

[Simon]

Oooookkkkkeeeey... So I'm supposed to believe that religous extremists, in thier war against the West and the Western culture, are financing operations by pirating and spreading the very thing that they are against.

It's kind of like hardcore Vegans raising money for a campaign by holding a sausage sizzle.

Complete bullshit.

--
Simon

I love todays propaganda, it's so transparent

[Nanite]

Want to demonize something but have now real information to back it up? Just say it fund terrorism, works every time!

Nan

In this post 9/11 world...

[sfe_software]

...everyone uses terrorism to push their agenda. I'm so sick of that phrase. Don't like something that people are doing? Tell them that it funds terrorists, and they'll stop. I suppose it works -- the average person probably believes this crap.

I was so pissed the first time I saw the commercial with the teenagers saying "I helped terrorists because I bought a dime bag" (or whatever). 9/11 was a *terrible* event, yes, but to try to make people think they're partly responsible because they commit some petty crime? Total BS.

We can laugh...

[Anonymous Coward]

but undemocratic countries around the world are using exactly the same trick to get rid of everybody who talks about free elections too loudly. Let's shoot the suckers, we're fighting terrorism! It has been 1 1/2 year since 9/11 and the Bush administration still has no exact definition of the word "terrorist". That is good for US foreign policy, but non-US citizens pay for this with their lives.

Re:We can laugh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, sir, the Bush regime does not recognize the proper definition of the term terrorist. If you will examine the list of known "terrorist" organizations they released, you will see quite a few political groups that have never been involved in acts of terror, nor advocated them.

Furthermore, your suggestion that America is right to attack Iraq is ludicrous. There are only two types of people dying in Iraq: children who die because we have imposed harsh restrictions on the nation of Iraq, and criminals who die for violating the laws of Iraq. How is this any different from America? Where, in the month of March, nearly 300 men have been put to death in Texas alone. The primary difference, you might say, is that some of those criminals in Iraq are merely political dissidents who oppose the Iraqi regime.

This thinking is flawed in two regards. First, America itself has begun to jail political dissidents as part of their war on terrorism. I can think of no better example than of the three men who were arrested for donating money to help Iraqi citizens. Members of our government have repeatedly claimed that financial contributions are protected as political speech, and yet the same rights have been denied to critics of our government. We jail dissidents while Iraq kills them. Obviously, we are morally superior to Iraq, no? Obviously he's a horrible despot who slaughters his citizens by the hundreds. Yet, from the perspective of nations like France or Britain, we are the morally depraved for we kill our common criminals. By the hundreds, we kill them. Should we expect the British or French to wage war against America to stop us from immorally killing our own citizens?

Of course, you may counter by reminding us of the Kurds, whom Saddam willfully exterminated. However, America has comitted a similar atrocity against its own people. You may suggest that that was long ago, and that it no longer matters; that we no longer butcher our citizens. This is true, but only because we instead murder the citizens of other nations. How can we claim, then, to be any better?

Despite your concerns about the loss of our civil liberties, you nonetheless advocate war with Iraq. I promise you that, once Iraq has been bombed and Saddam killed/deposed, that the loss of our liberties will continue, but at an increased rate, for the invasion of Iraq would further strengthen the resolve of the many anti-American rebels who remain in this world.

Re:We can laugh...

[RapaNui]

Well, you know the definition of a terrorist?

If you agree with what they're doing, they're freedom fighters...

If you don't agree with them, they're terrorists,

If you're not quite sure yet, then they're guerillas.

convenient bandwagon

[nano-second]

It's just jumping on a convenient political bandwagon in order to get support for their cause. Same reason marijuana "funds" terrorism, it's something they want to label as bad and right now, terrorism is a safe excuse since regardless of what people think of war, it's hard to dispute that terrorism is bad.

If the current big evil was pollution, I'm sure they'd be coming up with some way to say that piracy was causing pollution... surely all those poorly run pirate factories are big polluters, right?

I would guess that a lot of the anti-civil-liberties laws that got shoved through recently were not created recently. I bet they were just waiting around for a good enough excuse that the public would accept it.

Re:Oh No!!!

[Grax]

They are whatever they decide will make them money today.

NEWS FLASH!
All black market activities fund terrorism in one way or another. That is how the black market works. Alcohol sales funded terrorism in the US during prohibition. Cocaine, stolen art, fake Levi jeans, ivory, all contribute to terrorism.

If we had a black market in Barbie dolls the money would be used to fund terrorism.

x "is used to fund terrorism" isn't really an effective argument for more controls over x. It is a better argument for making x freely available so that there will be no black market for it.

Obviously the MPAA and MS wouldn't go for the idea but they are the ones creating the black market with their licensing requirements. If they really cared about avoiding the funding of terrorism they would let whoever wanted to copy their stuff copy it freely.

Anyhow, why are they spending their energy harassing p2p users when they have the real hardcore criminal gangs to go after? Could it be because the average p2p user don't have bombs?

Re:they are getting desparate

[ClioCJS]

...And notice that there generally isn't gang warfare over Alcohol and Cigarettes, is there?

That's because they are legal. Prohibition is what creates gang warfare.

Remember, the most powerful gang warfare we ever had was during alcohol prohibition. Because more people drink alcohol than smoke marijuana, it created a lot more funding for Al Capone and his insidious cronies.

As long as things people want to do are illegal but still have high demand, they will fund the black market.

Legalize it.

Re:Recent conviction on cigerette smuggling and te

[tigheig]

We shouldn't dismiss outright, but assertions require proof, and extraordinary assertions require extraordinary proof. Without proof a claim must be considered mere speculation.

Minds certainly should remain open, but if the claimant provides no facts to support the claim and instead depends on an appeal to a pre-existing emotion for validation (in this case justified outrage over the results of terrorism) then the claim trivializes itself.

Don't we see similar "appeals to outrage" here on /. whenever a story about the DMCA or Microsoft is posted? Such arguments are no more valid when they are presented by a corporation to a Congressional committee than they are when presented by one of us in this forum. They just have a larger and more influential audience.

And do you know why?

[RatBastard]

Do you?

Hlack market economies create violence. All of them. They have no real choice. The reason is simple: no recourse to the law.

What do you do if you buy a bottle rum at a liqour store and find out it's nothing but water? You call the police and have that jackass arrested for selling bogus merchandice.

What do you do if you buy some weed from a dealer and it turns out to be catnip and oregano? Call the cops? Last person I heard about that did that was arrested. No. You either live with the fact that you got ripped off or you shoot the sonofabitch.

Because the sale, puirchase and distribution of pot, or any other illegal drug, requires that the manufacturers/growers, distributors, sellers and end consumers all operate outside the law. This leaves them only one recourse when things go bad. This also leaves them no choice in how to deal with conflicts of any kind.

If legalized and sold through normal sales channels, drugstores (hey, that's a catchy name) drug-related violence will drop like a stone. If you can call the cops because that jackass at the corner pharmacy cuts his stock of Vantage Ultra Gold Columbian with catnip then you don't have to shoot him for it. If he knows that he can call the coips because you passed a bad check he knows he dowsn't have to shoot you for trying not to pay.

It's like the liqour business durring prohibition, or the porn industry when it was illegal to make blue movies, or like prostitution is right now. When you make something that people want illegal, you create a lawless subculture that is infested with violence.

The Merits of Drug Prohibition

[jimsum]

One of the big successes of the anti-drug propaganda war is what you have pointed out, the way the authorities have been able to blame the problems of prohibition on the drug itself.

Now, just because prohibition causes problems is not necessarily an argument against prohibition; it is simply part of the cost-benefit analysis. Alcohol prohibition worked to some extent, it cut alcohol consumption in half. However, the general public decided that the costs of prohibition outweighed the benefits of reducing alcohol use.

When it comes to pot, all the scientific evidence shows that it is less harmful than alcohol; it isn't possible to overdose (unlike alcohol "poisoning"), there are no serious diseases proven to be caused by it (unlike cirrhosis of the liver), and it is not nearly as addictive (read up on delirium tremens, then find any description of pot addiction). Since pot is even less harmful than alcohol, there is even less reason to accept the cost of prohibiting it, as compared to alcohol.

Now with other drugs, like heroin, the benefits of reducing consumption may outweigh the costs of enforcement. Unfortunately, governments rarely bother to even admit the costs of prohibition, preferring to blame everything on the drug. The result is that people are forced to choose the more dangerous mind-altering substance, Alcohol. They must risk arrest in order to make the more responsible and intelligent choice of using pot, the least harmful mind-altering drug.