RSS
Twitter
Attorney General Mukasy Claims Piracy Funds Terrorism
from the oh-please dept
We had assumed that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' sudden facsination with "piracy" was as a way to avoid dealing with the controversy surrounding his office -- but it appears his successor is heading down that path as well. In a speech given today in Silicon Valley, Attorney General Michael Mukasey gave a fear mongering speech about how piracy and counterfeiting fosters terrorism. This is a line (literally) straight from the RIAA training manual, which it appears Mukasey has bought into. It should come as no surprise to hear that Mukasey flew up to Silicon Valley after spending a day in Hollywood at Warner Brothers.
Still, what's most interesting is that he doesn't seem to indicate much of a difference between merely copying content and "counterfeiting," which would be passing off a fake good as a legitimate one. Counterfeiting is more akin to "trademark" in that it's really about customer protection (making sure you're not buying Bob's Cola thinking that it's Coca Cola). It's understandable to be upset about counterfeiting -- but the problem is that two separate impartial government agencies have both found that counterfeiting isn't that big a problem, and it's regularly exaggerated by lobbyists.
Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that any of these nuances have made it to the AG's office. Instead, he's just lumped all piracy and counterfeiting issues into one single category and labeled it all a big problem and linked it to "terrorism" so that no one questions it. And rather than assigning more Justice Department officials to work on real problems and real crimes, he's been beefing up the "IP" group, increasing prosecutions 33% in the last couple of years. Is this really the best use of our taxpayer money?
