Anti-Piracy PI Talks About Building Cases Against File-Sharers 109
An anonymous reader writes "Torrent Freak has an interesting interview with a former private investigator who was hired to track people who pirated software and movies. He relates some of the tactics used to make evidence more appealing to police, the media and lawmakers. He said, 'We discussed the formula for extrapolating the potential street value earnings of "laboratories" and we were instructed to count all blank discs in our seizure figures as if they were potential product. Mr. Gane also explained that the increased loss approximation figures were derived from all forms of impacts on decreasing cinema patronage right through to the farmer who grows the corn for popping.' Regarding the head of AFACT, the article notes, 'Gane understood that the media was an essential tool towards AFACT's goal of getting tougher copyright legislation in place. And for this purpose, it was a good idea to bend the truth a bit.'"
bad title? (Score:2, Insightful)
The title is misleading, just by looking at the summary you can see this is about actual copyright infringement, not 'file sharers'. Guess this was submitted by a **aa shill.
Re:How does he sleep at night? (Score:3, Insightful)
What a low-life pond scum, willing participating in such a corrupt scheme/racket. Some people will do anything for money.
May the worms eat his dead body from its casket and vomit his remains.
I'm not sure how busting people for making counterfeit hardcopy and selling them for money qualifies as a "corrupt scheme/racket". Most people would consider plain old fashioned theft to be just that... theft.
Oh, I'm sorry, you must have just read the slashdot title and immediately posted your rant without reading either the summary OR the article. Maybe you should stop doing that, it makes you look like an idiot.
Re:How does he sleep at night? (Score:4, Insightful)
First, piracy is a copyright violation; piracy is NOT theft. [debianhelp.org]
But to a address your point:
I'm not sure how busting people for making counterfeit hardcopy and selling them for money qualifies as a "corrupt scheme/racket".
The corrupt scheme is the inflating of the value of the so-called piracy by counting every blank disc as a pirated copy and lying like this for political purposes. This is the same immoral/sleazy tactic used by police to inflate the "street value" of seized marijuana plants. The corrupt cops count seeds, seedlings, leaves, stems, root balls, etc. when they know that only the bud of the pot plant gets sold and has real value. They lie this way to make the "crime" seem bigger.
This is the same reason the corrupt PI lies about the value of pirated material. But in this case, they're also doing it to influence corrupt, corporate-funded politicians to pass harsher laws.