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When You Watch Bootleg Movies, You Watch Them With Bin Laden
Posted by James Grimmelmann on Saturday, March 15 @ 08:45:43 EST Copyright
A Justice Department official testified before a House committee that large-scale overseas DVD piracy is linked to terrorism. Microsoft and the MPAA also testified at the hearing on the scale of such operations, which run factories in Russia, Malaysia, and other countries with "weak" intellectual property laws.

Under closer questioning, however, none of those at the hearing could point to any specific connections between copyright infringement and terrorism. Instead, the reasoning went something like "1) organized crime gangs run bootleg factories. 2) organized crime is linked to terrorism. 3) therefore bootlegs are funding terrorism."

Which was enough for Jack Valenti to complain about P-to-P networks and demand new anti-copying laws.

 
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Re: When You Watch Bootleg Movies, You Watch Them With Bin Laden (Score: 1)
by kaos on Saturday, March 15 @ 09:03:46 EST
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Let me see how this logic works: if you are against RIAA, you must be a pirate, and therefore who abets terrorism. If you use encryption, you must be one also, because THEY use it. If you are a coffee drinker, you are linked also because they drink coffee. If you are against the war, then you must be an enemy of the state. Wait a minute! That's not right! Terrorists are FOR the war, aren't they? One more thing: those bad guys have sex, don't they? Therefore we must stop immediately.


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Re: When You Watch Bootleg Movies, You Watch Them With Bin Laden (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Saturday, March 15 @ 11:54:43 EST
What relationship does bootleg factories have to P-P networks. If anything, P-P networks would compete directly with Bootleg copies of the film and (according to their logic) actually reduce the funds available to terrorists.

There is a serious problem here. The legislation that Valenti is advocating would in no way affect bootleg operations, and would in fact make them more profitable (thus increasing the flow of funds to terrorists -- by his reasoning). His proposals are targeted directly at the consumer, not at commercial criminal activity.



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Re: When You Watch Bootleg Movies, You Watch Them With Bin Laden (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Sunday, March 16 @ 12:21:33 EST
So let me get this straight....

Terrorists require money to operate.

Terrorists may utilize illegal methods to obtain said money for operations.

Well I for one am shocked that terrorists would sink so low.


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Re: When You Watch Bootleg Movies, You Watch Them With Bin Laden (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Sunday, March 16 @ 18:15:12 EST
Bill Marr would be proud. Maybe even prouder if it was his show you downloaded from gnutella (with a much broader audience than ABC at 12:35 pm)... or maybe not.


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Re: When You Watch Bootleg Movies, You Watch Them With Bin Laden (Score: 0)
by Anonymous on Sunday, March 16 @ 22:52:40 EST
"Which was enough for Jack Valenti to complain about P-to-P networks and demand new anti-copying laws."

I think you have mischaracterized Valenti's point. You imply that this alleged connection between DVD piracy and terrorism was the basis for Valenti's complaint. Yet the article you quoted said, "No one at the hearing connected P-to-P trading with the financing of terrorism or organized crime." It sounds to me like Valenti was making the same point he always does, that illegla file trading will eventually harm the movie business and so it should be stopped.

Where is the evidence that Valenti tried to link P2P to terrorism, as you implied?


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