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Piracy More Serious Than Bank Robbery?
An anonymous reader writes sends us to Ars Technica for a dissertation on how detached and manipulative the discussion about copyright is becoming. "NBC/Universal general counsel Rick Cotton suggests that society wastes entirely too much money policing crimes like burglary, fraud, and bank-robbing, when it should be doing something about piracy instead. 'Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned,' Cotton said. 'If you add up all the various kinds of property crimes in this country, everything from theft, to fraud, to burglary, bank-robbing, all of it, it costs the country $16 billion a year. But intellectual property crime runs to hundreds of billions [of dollars] a year.'" Ars points out how completely specious that "hundreds of billions" is.
It's incredible that these monsters are going unpunished. They should be squashed like the bugs they are.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
It's worse than you think. You see, I am a bank-robber. It's not a decision I just made one day. I was born a bank-robber. I subsist on bank-robbery. The laws that are in place to prevent bank-robbery rob me of my right to subsist. The police have taken a violent reaction to my way of life and livelihood.
Just last week, because of the risk involved, I was unable to rob a bank for a total of $100,000,000 dollars! Over the course of a year, that means that by restricting my right to the pursuit of happiness is costing me, and by extension, the economy, $36,500,000,000. That's right, well over thirty billion dollars.
Yadda, yadda, yadda. Bada-bing bada-boom. Give me all your money, fuckers, this is stick-up. (you can just Paypal me)
Please stop stalking me, bro.
Holey Bat shit Batman..