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Film Piracy, Organized Crime and Terrorism
flip-flop writes "The RAND Corporation has just released a lengthy report titled "Film Piracy, Organized Crime, and Terrorism" which attempts to link all three. The authors suggest that organized crime might be financing itself in part through movie piracy (PDF) — and in three out of 14 of their international case studies, they claim that profits from piracy end up with suspected terrorist organizations. But now for the interesting part! Quote from the preface: 'The study was made possible by a grant from the Motion Picture Association (MPA).' Ah, what a surprise..."
The RAND Corporation has made a video summary of the report as well. TorrentFreak has an article disputing some of the report's claims, focusing criticism on RAND's interchangeable use of the terms "piracy" and "counterfeiting" — the report deals with the physical distribution of DVDs, making only brief mention of digital downloads. The MPAA and others have barked up this tree before.
Download Torrents, stamp out terrorism.
If something's available for less there's always someone who will buy it. The only solution therefore is to make this stuff available for free and starve the "terrorists" and "organised crime syndicates" of money. Anyone who opposes peer-to-peer networking supports terrorism.
They're both based on "intellectual property". So they're gambling that laws protecting "IP" will be good for them.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
There is a fundamental difference between economic and non-economic piracy.
Yes, economic pirates go for the galleons and merchantmen as well as plundering small, poorly defended towns; whereas non-economic pirates attack frigates and other warships, however these are usually referred to as privateers.
Oh wait, what were we talking about?
Copyright infringement is not the same as "piracy". No one dies. No ships get sunk. And nothing gets STOLEN. Copyrighted works get digitally copied, though.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Organized crime would most likely love to have online P2P stopped.
Of course the MPAA would love that, they keep saying so every chance they get!
I thought the MPAA was organized crime...
There may be no 'next'. Terrorism is timeless and can be milked forever.
And the fear of not being 'with us' sill squelch a lot of people that disagree.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Ah - these days we have the 'terrorist ghost', earlier we had the 'communist ghost'.
I wonder what's next.
That would be the ghost of common sense. Pretty sure that poor bastard is dead these days.
There are only 10 kinds of people in the world. Those that understand binary and those that don't.
No, the MPAA are a bunch of thugs.
RAND corporation, however, a sickening organization that profiteers by preparing "research papers" that deliberately misrepresents facts for the purpose of twisting social and economic policy to serve the agendas of big lobby groups, is the worst kind of organized crime; the kind that has government backing.
I hate printers.
Considering that the RAND Corporation has done actual research -- and you have done nothing --I see no substantial reason to doubt their conclusions. Even the MPA connection is fine by me, despite the submitter's insinuations.
You're right that there's plenty of real money to be made from bootlegging, and in that respect the research is probably right, but the conclusions that they come to based on their research are completely wrong.
The fallacy here is that RAND is equating online piracy with bootlegging, and concluding that since bootlegging helps the terrorists, online piracy helps the terrorists. The reality is that online piracy and bootlegging are completely at odds. People who download torrents generally don't buy bootlegs because they can get better quality and cheaper online. If anything, online piracy hurts the bootlegging industry.
People respond irrationally when they're afraid, and the MPA is hoping to take advantage of this to get Americans to believe that torrents 'helps the terrorists' even though a rational look at the situation suggests exactly the opposite. This is a cynical and calculated PR move in the MPA's ongoing campaign against piracy.
It probably is true that buying bootleg dvds supports terrorism, so if you're a patriotic American, you should download torrents instead of buying bootlegged copies!
... the wide availability of (free or very inexpensive) digital downloads is killing off the demand for counterfeit DVDs.
We're doing our part to deprive the terrorists of their sources of financing.
Have gnu, will travel.
The report says only what those who paid the RAND Corporation wanted it to say. The purpose of RAND is to try to hide the foolishness with intellectual argument.
Next reports from RAND:
Employees should agree that they are paid too much.
Rich people are wonderful leaders, and should be allowed to do anything they want.
The U.S. government's policy of killing people will bring peace.
The failures of banks in the United States were completely unforeseeable. When Warren Buffett predicted problems in 2002, he was talking about something else.
The U.S. government should buy more weapons. You never know when they will be needed.
We wage so-called wars on organized crime, gangs, and prostitution rings. We have always worked hard to break up criminal operations. Drug users are not some special group that deserve exception.
Governments make the crime, criminals commit it. Legalize drugs and they are no longer criminals. Problem solved.
Just because you have a grip on your addiction doesn't mean a crackhead who is stealing spark plugs and DVD players has the same willpower you do.
Assuming that the person was addicted to drugs, how is it different then someone stealing spark plugs and DVD players to fill a "legal" addiction such as gambling, alcohol and cigarettes? Is stealing wrong, yes, but would these people have to steal to get their addiction if these drugs were regulated in the same way alcohol and cigarettes are regulated rather then all-out banned?
It may not have destroyed your life, but making drugs legal/free/cheap/easier to get will be hell for so many others. In my town we just lost four teenagers in an car accident; they had been smoking salvia (which is legal) beforehand. If we are already struggling with the effects of "legal highs", how much worse will it get when we throw in currently illegal drugs into the mix?
But similarly, if they had been drinking the results would have been the same, but look at what prohibition did, it simply made ordinary people into criminals and let unscrupulous people get rich. People need to know what these drugs can do, yes, but they need a way to look at it without the tinted lenses of "This is brought to you by the counsel for the elimination of drugs", this is like trying to teach abstinence only, its a good idea, but not everyone is going to follow it, and when they don't, bad things happen.
I agree with you, ideally we should not have drugs. Fact: Drugs exist. Fact: Drugs can be easily bought even with all of our regulations on it Fact: Because of the prohibition of drugs, the money that comes from drugs goes to lawbreakers, these lawbreakers then use the money to fund more crime. Fact: Drugs can ruin lives, marriages, and relationships, but so can a lot of legal things, alcohol, gambling, and consumerism
People will always get drugs, they have since the dawn of time, the war on drugs though makes sure that the people who get drugs end up handing money to the wrong people, those that will use the money not to benefit themselves and others but rather use the money for violence. These people who get rich, usually end up screwing those who buy from them by poisoning the drugs they sell, the free market solution (take them to court and sue them for everything they own), doesn't work because what they were doing was illegal, so no one wins.
*Disclaimer, I do not use drugs, yes, I have seen the affects of what drugs do, and seen the affects of what legal things do (gambling, drinking, smoking, etc) too
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.