Feds Overstate Software Piracy's Link To Terrorism

Lucas123 writes "Attorney General Michael Mukasey claims that terrorists sell pirated software as a way to finance their operations, without presenting a shred of evidence for his case. He's doing it to push through a controversial piece of intellectual property legislation that would increase IP penalties, increase police power, set up a new agency to investigate IP theft, and more. 'Criminal syndicates, and in some cases even terrorist groups, view IP crime as a lucrative business, and see it as a low-risk way to fund other activities,' Mukasey told a crowd at the Tech Museum of Innovation last week."

Comments

This isn't the only lie Mukasey's told

[ClamIAm]

Wow, the Bush Administration has picked some real winners for that ol' Attorney General position. I really hoped they would replace Gonzales with someone who has a little more integrity. Unfortunately for the nation, it seems they're more interested in lapdogs who will parrot the Administration's version of reality, no matter the cost.

Moving on to Mukasey specifically, this little fib isn't the only time he's tried to distort reality. Just a few days ago, he stated there had been "a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went."

The interesting thing about this comment is that it's impossible to know whether it's true. This supposed call was not referred to after 9/11, nor during the 9/11 Commission hearings, nor at any other time until last Thursday.

However, even if we give them the benefit of the doubt, his arguments that draw on this statement are lies. This is because he made this comment in support of increased surveillance, and also to support the despicable circumvention of the justice system with regard to telecom companies.

The lie is that "we knew about this call but we weren't able to do anything because only with this new, super-powered law can we do that". The surveillance laws at the time he says this call took place absolutely allowed the government to listen in on it. They didn't even need a warrant, as even under the older FISA law, warrants were not needed for calls that comes into the US from outside it.

He lied again when he voiced support for putting telecom companies above the law. Even though Mukasey was a federal judge, he claimed that the telco lawsuits would let the whole world know how our intelligence organizations operate.

Fellow Slashdotters, I hope you join me in saying: what the fuck?! We can't continue to let these clowns get away with shit like this. I admit I've been as lazy as most "concerned citizens" in the US seem to be lately, but seriously, I cannot allow my democracy to be flushed down the toilet by a bunch of arrogant fucks who think they can get away with whatever they want.

Re:No shame

[waveman]

I have been looking at the evidence over the years and it seems that terrorists are more likely to get funding from making and selling illegal drugs than from marginal activities like copying software.

The total spend on illegal drugs in the US alone is over $1 trillion!. This money goes to organized crime, gangsters, crooked police and politicians, and to terrorists.

Have a look at Afghanistan, which is currently supplying a large percentage of the world's heroin trade. The funds are then used to fight the US, NATO and other allies in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Just another cost of the "war on drugs". Current US drug policies, which are also forced on the rest of the world, are widely recognized to be counter-productive. And why? The side-effects of heroin are constipation and the risk of overdose. Overdose is a problem caused by erratic potencies, which is a result of illegality.

However certain people make a lot of money from the war on drugs. Thus the policy does not change.

Re:Well duh

[Ryan Mallon]

You may not even know if software you are buying is pirated. A few years back a friend lent me a cd folder full of games. All of them had the game logos on the cds, and most of them had full colour booklets with them. I ended up asking my friend how much he had spent on the games in the folder, and replied: hardly anything, they are all pirated. He bought them somewhere in Asia. They take piracy a bit more seriously over there, you don't just get a blank cd with the games name scribbled on it in felt pen, you get a full colour box, authentic looking cd, the works.

The bigger problem for game companies than people downloading torrents, is illegal factories which are producing pirated versions of games (and other types of software) which can be sold at lost cost, are hard to tell apart from the real deal. Many people who buy these games are unaware that they even have an illegal copy.

Re:Well duh

[Atario]

Mr. Gore allowed his wife and her friends in the PMRC to have special senate hearings

"Allowed" her to? What was he supposed to do, beat her till she stopped? And was he also supposed to beat the other three founding biddies -- er, members -- of PMRC?

Also, for the record, they were never advocating "*BANNING*" (bolded, asterisked, all-caps, or otherwise) anything. It was mostly a bunch of silly visibility-reduction tactics (that would, of course, only increase the sales of the targeted albums via heightened cachet...) and, of course, the parental-advisory stickers we see to this day (that the industry adopted before the hearings were even held).

Believe me, I never had any love for the PMRC, but out-and-out misinformation isn't going to help anything -- except an attempt to smear Al Gore. And that's not at all what you were trying to do...right?