Slashdot Mirror
Tainted "Piracy" Statistics
newtley writes, "The music, movie, and software cartels claim 'piracy' is a Number One problem not only for themselves, but for the world as a whole and so successful are their continuing dis- and misinformation propaganda campaigns that they've been able to dragoon entire governments and police forces into acting as industry enforcers. But, says p2pnet, far from being at the top of the pile, movie and music piracy rank 16th and 20th, respectively, on a global index of illicit markets. (Software piracy ranks 7th.) And even those positions are subject to considerable doubt."
It's not that drugs don't have inherent risks, it's more that criminalizing them does nothing to prevent addiction. When drugs were first criminalized, it was because a whopping 7% of the population was estimated to be addicted to drugs. Now, close to a hundred years later, after many billions of dollars have been spent, and organized crime (gangs, mafia, etc) have been given control over these insanely profitable items leading to gang violence, filling and overfilling our prisons, underprivileged sectors of society have been demonized, etc etc etc... we have finally brought our national drug addiction rate down to... 7% of the population. That's why the drug war is not morally justified... if the resources funneled into fighting drugs with the police force had been channeled into public education, treatment and rehabilitation, and most of all improving the quality of life of citizens at risk for developing addictions (Read about rat park) there might have been a significant decrease in addiction rates, but the current policing model does NOTHING to prevent addiction.