Leaked RIAA Training Video

An anonymous reader writes "Gizmodo has a clip of that RIAA training video produced with the NDAA for US prosecutors that was leaked to torrent sites a few days ago. It argues they should pursue piracy cases because it leads to bigger and badder wares, like handguns, drugs, terrorist orgs, and hardcore repeat offender criminals. It's kind of sad how far they're stretching to bring law enforcement into the matter."

Comments

gateway crime misinformation

[Will the Chill]

This is just the same old "gateway crime" argument, which, if history is any example, will inevitably be scientifically proven false by statistical studies showing (perhaps a correlation, but) no causation.

All agressive prosecutors (persecutors?) will fall back on this precept when it starts to become clear the "crime" they're fighting against is victimless and thus shouldn't be considered a crime at all.

I find this is mostly caused by greed and ignorance on the part of the persecuting party and any agencies they employ in their unethical battle.

-WtC

*error 404: sig not found*

Re:gateway crime misinformation

[Samgilljoy]

This is just the same old "gateway crime" argument, which, if history is any example, will inevitably be scientifically proven false by statistical studies showing (perhaps a correlation, but) no causation.

And the old gateway crime argument is just a form of the ancient post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

People fill in the gaps in their information with ideology. Unfortunately, a great deal of law enforcement training perpetuates these ideas. Time and again, they'll tell you that people convicted of felony X first committed misdemeanor Y, but they fail to notice that they have no idea how many people actually commit misdemeanor Y without ever coming under the radar. Counterarguments which are under the radar, like the hordes of people who smoke pot but don't do crack, are filed away as potential crack smokers rather than demonstrations that smoking pot does not necessarily lead to smoking crack. They also ignore extensions of their own arguments, and not just the ad nauseam examples. For instance, one could just as easily say that drinking beer leads to smoking crack even in adults, but they won't. Why causal linkages between beer and pot and crack are so strong in kids, while the link between beer and anything "druggy" magically disappears during adulthood is beyond me, but then, I only had 9 years of full-time University education and 3 years of doctoral research, so I guess I ain't clever enough to suss out thar thinkun'

Re:gateway crime misinformation

[tubapro12]

Interesting idea, but the way I see it, if they're going to argue that piracy is a gateway crime, how can they not argue that music makes people violent? I have to offset this with the fact that they are the RIAA, nevertheless, combining these two opinions seems roughly logically consistent to me.

The Irony Is...

[fsckr]

That many of the 'artists' that the RIAA protects are hardcore repeat offender criminals that are pimping the handguns, drugs etc etc

It actually does solve a lot...

[Serengeti]

Hate to ruin the fun here... seriously I love all of you... but no where in the video were they suggesting that piracy and terrorism, murder or drugs are related.

All that was suggested was that if officers wanted into a suspects home, but did not have enough evidence to issue a warrant on the suspected charges alone, they could use piracy as a means to get that warrant. The intent, which should be obvious by now, is to get into the house so that evidence of terrorism, drug trafficking or violent intent involving firearms might then be 'coincidentally' discovered.

And hey... sounds like it's a great strategy. How many people do you know that haven't pirated anything at all? The police just found themselves a skeleton key.