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Terrorist Link to Copyright Piracy Alleged
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun May 29, 2005 02:31 PM
from the damn-those-p2pers dept.
from the damn-those-p2pers dept.
xbsd writes "John Stedman, a lieutenant in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in charge of IP violations, testified in front of the Senate Homeland Security committee that some associates of terrorist groups such as Hezbollah may be involved in copyright violations. According to CNET's Declean McCullagh: 'Even though Stedman's evidence is circumstantial, his testimony comes as Congress is expected to consider new copyright legislation this year. An invocation of terrorism, the trump card of modern American politics, could ease the passage of the next major expansion of copyright powers'."
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News: Film Piracy, Organized Crime and Terrorism 198 comments
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.
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Well (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell lets just call Nazis terrorists now. They are pretty much interchangable if you ignore the "short" gap between the end of the second world war and today
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
If piracy was a political problem 20 years ago they would have called them "commies".
Parent
In related news... (Score:5, Interesting)
<SARCASM>
So people who drive too fast obviously have terrorist connections. They should be punished as terrorists.
</SARCASM>
Not P2P (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not P2P (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Fighting piracy helps terrorism!! (Score:5, Interesting)
If the **AA spends wipes out common piracy, people won't be getting their free movies through BT, Kazaa or whatever. By the laws of human desire, the next cheapest way to get this content would be the knockoff DVDs right? Won't kicking people off of common piracy just make professional piracy more profitable?
Therefore fighting piracy funds terrorism.
Parent
Re:Not P2P (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
if only (Score:5, Funny)
Now, if only we could catch Al Qaeda's Osama Bin Laden in violation of copyright laws! Then he'd have to deal with the RIAA and the MPAA.... heaven help him!
Didn't you know it would come to this? (Score:5, Funny)
with apologies to
Thomas De Quincey
Straight from an internal Hezbollah email (Score:5, Funny)
If piracy is outlawed.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Corporatism Here.... (Score:5, Interesting)
... is getting in my nerves. Why should the big corporations here have the right to meddle into our copyright laws, and then slap the name "terrorism" in the justification of doing so? The problem with these copyright laws that the MPAA/RIAA have been pushing is that they are forgetting our (the citizen's) end of the stick. They have been increasing the duration of copyrights and patents to the point that most of us would be dead before we see Mickey Mouse in the public domain (since they keep extending it). They have been increasing the punishments for people who have already been illegally copyright infringing (since when does uploading a movie to the Internet warrant a 3-year prison sentence?), and illegalizing things that should be under fair-use (e.g., the DMCA; why should the government tell me what to do with my DVDs in my own private use?). The politicians are ignorant about technical issues, the voters are ignorant about the politicians, and they're letting the corporations run amok. But where is our public domain? Where is our "fair use"? Where is our freedom?
It's like our government is being run by the Socialist Party and the Fascist Party. Both of them don't care about liberty and both don't want a small government. All they want to do is to continue manipulating the public until they reach their logical goals: a huge, authoritarian government. The only difference is that the socialists would justify it in the name of "helping the poor" and the fascists would justify it in the name of "moral values." Both would justify it in the names of "protecting the children" and "defending this country against terrorism."
Come on Libertarians and Greens. They will have to win the 2008 election if we ever hope for this country to be saved by this rampant corporatism and the move toward totalitarianism.
Re:The Corporatism Here.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the socialists actually believe, or want to believe, that; but it's simply not true. One of my essential rights is the right to maintain my property and the fruits and rewards of my labor. Socialists do not recognize that principle and believe that it's OK for "society" to take from individuals and redistribute wealth and resources in the name of "fairness" and equality. But no matter what the justification, if my property is stolen from me, it's still stolen. Just naming the thief "government" and calling it "taxation" instead of "robbery" doesn't change anything.
Anyway, all of that aside, rampant socialism just does not work anyway. Look at the former USSR... "from each according to his means, to each according to his need" or whatever, makes a nice sound bite. But in practice this means that the government leader types were "more equal" than the common folks because they had... wait for it.... power. After all, somebody had to be "in charge" to make sure the wealth redistribution stuff was carried out.
But there's the rub... no matter how you justify it, no matter how you try to structure it, if you create an institution that grants certain people power or dominion over others, it will eventually become corrupt as people attempt to manipulate the system for their own benefit. Socialism sounds good on paper, but in practice it leads to totalitarianism just like fascism does.
Parent
zerg (Score:5, Insightful)
Before the Soviet Union collapsed, everything evil was blamed on communists, and any response, no matter how stupid, was deemed acceptible in order to fight communism. And it "worked". The Soviet Union's collapse occured after the US did all sorts of stupid things in the name of fighting communism, therefore the fall of communism *must [skepdic.com]* have been brought about by America's direct intervention!
Fighting terrorism is no different. And I quote:
Homeland Security is a bigger threat to the American way of life than anything Osama bin Forgotten can come up w/. Feel free to do something about it [aclu.org]...
Everytime you download free with bittorrent (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yeah, well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
But of course the RIAA is a terrorist group! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:I Guess The Children Did Work (Score:5, Informative)
This has nothing to do with socialism. Socialism includes state housing, healthcare, and welfare. What you are thinking of is right wing authoritarianism, also known as facism. Please use proper terminology when trying to state a flame war over political ideology.
Parent
Re:I Guess The Children Did Work (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, this is a simplification, but offers a starting point. Next:
Stalin was a socialist. Hitler was a socialist.
Do you have any idea what you're talking about? The fact that "nazi" comes from "national-socialism" or that Lenin and Stalin claimed to have "embraced and extended" Marx's theories is circumstantial for the end result - everything must start somewhere. You might as well say that Napoleon was a republican, since he begun by serving the French Republic.
Now look up those definitions on your own if you don't trust these, but to spell it out for you: Hitler was the head of a fascist regime in its purest form ('extreme right wing' some would call it). Stalin was the head of an authoritarian regime whose ideology is usually known as Marxism-Leninism (or 'extreme left wing') - some people would say it was not communism, but a perverted form, while others will argue that it was indeed communism - and the logical conclusion of any attempt to follow the theoretical sequence capitalism -> socialism -> communism to its end.
To go back to the original point, in practice there is not a whole lot of difference in form between the two extremes, but you have to bear in mind that socialism means state ownership and in the extreme (communist) case no private property, while fascism means state control, which is a little less. Also, in theory socialism does not advocate an authoritarian government, but it can easily fall into one when pushed. Now, what we have here is neither
Parent
Re:I Guess The Children Did Work (Score:5, Informative)
Joe Stalin was dictator and he got his education in Tiflis Theological Seminary. Stalin used communist party to get into power and then killed all hard line commie competitors like Leon Trotsky during Great Purge. After that the proper name of his rule was Stalinism
Parent
Re:I Guess The Children Did Work (Score:5, Insightful)
You are all socialists in that regard. The question is a matter of a degree, and who gets "serviced" by these government institutions. The government is really a whole network of institutions, and just who those institutions work for is often up for grabs. Many conservatives are quite happy to evoke the idea of "laissez-faire" after they hide or ignore the ways in which the interests of the powerful are being buttressed by the state. When the state provides any services to the not-powerful, though, it gets tarnished as "socialism."
Parent
Socialism is economics (Score:5, Informative)
Also, don't be an idiot and say Nazi's were socialist because they called themselves socialist. Do you beleive everything the Nazi's tell you?
Kind Regards
Parent
Re:I Guess The Children Did Work (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm old enough to remember when the Republicans wanted to "get government out of our lives."
i.e. before they had all the power in government.
Parent
Re:I Guess The Children Did Work (Score:5, Insightful)
Too true. How many bills had Bush vetoed?
I'm old enough to remember when the Republicans wanted to "get government out of our lives."
Yeah, they certainly enjoyed the Libertarian line until it came to their term in power.
Do you remember Reagan's acceptance speech?
"...Government *is* the problem"
How soon they forget.
Parent
Yes, you're missing something. (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, for the record? I truly believe this is a ridiculous stab at increasing copyright enforcement (e.g. making it a criminal instead of civil offense or some such) by linking infringement to terrorism. I think these people should be laughed out of congress.
However, here is what you are missing.
When it comes to so-called terrorism, under many (if not most) circumstances the only real difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is your point of view. That "terrorism" has to be funded by someone.
Enter the Middle East... Asia... in fact, just about anywhere that isn't North America or Western Europe or Australia. Anyone who has been abroad can tell you about the street vendors peddling $5 copies of Windows or $1 copies of music CDs or movies, often out of little wooden carts. Many of the people selling these DVDs have never even owned a DVD player. But piracy is rampant in those countries (largely because in those countries, no one can afford the "real" pricing).
Now, you think some of this money finds its way into the hands of freedom fighters/terrorists? You bet it does. Just like some money from the sales of sausages, oil, prostitutes, cabbages, or camels finds its way into the hands of terrorists. Though, let's face it, selling pirated DVDs (in many cases to foreigner tourists!) has a higher profit margin and thus probably contributes more. (Herein, of course, is the aforementioned circumstantial evidence)
It would be an immediately obvious fallacy to say that "America-hating, pirated-DVD-selling, terrorist-contributing street peddler" is pretty much the same as "music-downloading teen."
But if you just insinuate it... viola! All sorts of crazy laws, none of which really have anything to do with actual terrorism.
Parent