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.

Pirates disgust me

[Anonymous Coward]

You wouldn't steal a car would you?

Re:Pirates disgust me

[Anonymous Coward]

I would if I could download one!

Re:Pirates disgust me

[Anonymous Coward]

I only steal souls.

-Steve
BTW Vista is the greatest OS ever! Buy it now!

Re:WTF?

[Odiumjunkie]

> I pirate an album and Britney Spears loses 2 dollars. A girl gets violently raped and her entire life is damaged and she may never
> recover. Which of these two things are more important?

If I pirate a Britney Spears album, my entire life is damaged and I may never recover.

Re:Pirates disgust me

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't steal software, music or videos either. I make my own copies.

Re:Pirates disgust me

[eebra82]

Lots of people steal Cars. Just ask Pixar.

Easy answer to this one...

[Aphrika]

Start robbing banks, then you wouldn't need to copy CDs and movies, you could just buy them.

First thing you'd do when entering the bank would be to shout "are any of you copyright lawyers?", then proceed to shoot any of them in the legs. They'd soon start to realise that having the police deal with bank robberies is a far better idea than having them go and arrest college kids for downloading Metallica...

What a bunch of unethical twats...

Re:Pirates disgust me

[Rakshasa Taisab]

I'm too hardcore for mere GTA and homicide. If it doesn't involve the latest Top 10 hit song, then I'm not going to bother touching it.

Re:His misconception...

[Eudial]

The basic misconception by the executive in question is that we judge the severity of crime by it's monetary value. Is he seriously suggesting that we should not try to solve rape cases just because there's no profit in it? Oh...and FP?

But think about the loss in revenue for the hookers, if men just go rape random women when they want to get laid! That's lots and lots of money!

Re:Pirates disgust me

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a really bad analogy, piracy is nothing like stealing a car. Pirates steal ships.

Re:Pirates disgust me

[pingoart]

Maybe in Second life...

Re:Pirates disgust me

[jez9999]

The total annual gross revenues of the music industry today are estimated at $11 billion.

That proves their point. The pirates are stealing 95% of their profits!

Re:Pirates disgust me

[Faylone]

That's okay, with the lax enforcement of burglary, I can take 100% of what they do get! They're obviously okay with somebody walking into their HQ and robbing the place...right?