Feds Overstate Software Piracy's Link To Terrorism 448
Lucas123 writes "Attorney General Michael Mukasey claims that terrorists sell pirated software as a way to finance their operations, without presenting a shred of evidence for his case. He's doing it to push through a controversial piece of intellectual property legislation that would increase IP penalties, increase police power, set up a new agency to investigate IP theft, and more. 'Criminal syndicates, and in some cases even terrorist groups, view IP crime as a lucrative business, and see it as a low-risk way to fund other activities,' Mukasey told a crowd at the Tech Museum of Innovation last week."
Well duh (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows? (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh no I'm confused!! (Score:5, Interesting)
They are a little bit right (Score:5, Interesting)
No, i'm not talking about grabbing the latest RLS off of Usenet, or racing it across FTPs. I'm talking about large scale DVD pressing facilities that are selling to the guy who is, in turn, selling to people on the street corner. Groups get to release high quality stuff, the Mob gets their source for a DVD. Its very simple.
Or did you all really think that guys were risking serious jail time and throwing down thousands on Telecine machines because it was "fun"?
Now, i don't know much about the warez scene, but I would imagine that its a very similar situation.
Organized crime != terrorism. But a lot of the really large scale operations are certainly not being run by a rogue group of 16 year olds.
Re:oh, how convenient (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No shame (Score:3, Interesting)
Did he just imply that the child porn was copy written? The whole speech was on IP laws. And what do mobsters have to do with anything or the russians. Think it might be possible hes trying to link mafia, russians and CP, things people dont like in the states to piracy? Come on, russians maybe but the mob and CP is totally unrelated.
Re:Well duh (Score:5, Interesting)
And which of the parties' presidential candidates is beating the drum of war and playing the security-panic card? I think that would, again, be the Republicans.
Re:I call bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
This may be true but you have to admit the Republicans are a lot better at it.
Don't be so sure. If compare, say, Nixon vs. Clinton, or Bush vs. FDR, you would have to conclude that at least Democrats are better at getting away with it.
Uhh... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Utter lies (Score:2, Interesting)
For now. The government has already given itself the ability to "disappear" you, with no legal recourse at your disposal. While the spectre of your child's ears handed to you is unspeakably horrible, so is the prospect of your child growing up without a parent because Daddy spoke out and was "extraordinarily rendered".
Re:Well duh (Score:5, Interesting)
They settled for something very similar to George Bush's strategy of "Pre-emptive Attack" and attacked a naval base on an island in an illegally stolen territory within the American Regional Empire. Their strike was an obvious contingency, so the valuable ships (spanky new aircraft carriers) were all sent out to sea, leaving behind (mostly) relatively older battleships and cruisers.
For more facts on this, I would recommend Daniel Yergin's "The Prize". [amazon.com]
You are not insightful. You are more of an ignorant troll.
RS
You forgot the word "Yet" (Score:0, Interesting)
The DMCA may not have been pushed to fight "terrorism" but it was a bad law and it's successor and enforcer is being justified by "terrorism". The spirit of the DMCA is that you can't help your neighbor even if you know how. That's much worse for society than economic loss by any given industry. People will work for a living no mater what industries live or die. The kinds of things the DMCA prevents are things that would enrich all of us far more than the protected obsolete businesses the DMCA protects. The DMCA is a violation of your rights, fucking tyranny, and that must always be enforced brutally. All of the other reductions of your rights follow from the first - you can't give up a little of your liberty.
There is no difference between the Republicans and Democrats now. They both represent the same interests and are both corrupt. It will be good to remove the Republicans to disrupt well worn channels of corruption but Democrats do not promise fundamental change and they will not deliver it. Both of them will send us to war in Iraq and both of them will continue the crazy attack on your liberty. Nader an other third parties offer some hope but he will be powerless without a well built and successfully elected party.
Re:Gotta correct that bold part (Score:4, Interesting)
They didn't even need a warrant, as even under the older FISA law, warrants were not needed for calls that comes into the US from outside it.
Yes they were. FISA explicitly spells out when a warrant is not required, and it is only when it is believed that no "U.S. Person" is a party to the call. A "U.S. person" basically means a U.S. citizen no matter where they are, or a non-citizen who is legally within the U.S. So that means any call with one end in the U.S. (where it isn't known the party in the u.s. is here illegally), or even a call that takes place entirely in a foreign country that includes a U.S. citizen, requires a warrant.
However that said, the argument that they needed a new law is BS because here is what they could have done perfectly legally: Tap the call in question immediately, and then any time within the next three days showed up before the FISA court to ask for a retro-active warrant. And as FISA's record clearly shows, if they had any reason at all to believe the call was suspect, FISA would have granted the warrant.
In other words, and this is important because it applies to all the recent surveilance too: The only reason not to get a warrant is if they had no reason at all to believe that the call is of any interest, not one tiny scrap of hearsay to suggest that it's a terrorist call. It means that as far as they knew, it was no different than the billions of other calls made daily.
So remember, whenever they say they need a new law to let them listen in on certain phone calls, that law would ONLY allow them the new power to listen to calls that are, as far as they could possibly tell, COMPLETELY INNOCENT.
It seems clear, it's about power. (Score:5, Interesting)
This looks to me, to be a move by the current head of the fbi to either attack the internet, or control it.
First we saw wikileaks get shut down by the courts, something completely unheard of, but it happened.
Then we see the story of the illegal hyperlinks and fbi stings.
Now we have the story of the fbi claiming that the terrorists are also software pirates.
I'm waiting for them to say the terrorists run linux and post on Slashdot. Also combine this with the battle over network neutrality.
Can someone piece together the big picture? Am I seeing a conspiracy where there is no conspiracy? Is this just about the fbi trying to increase it's power? Is this part of a strategy to attack the net? What exactly is going on?
Re:You forgot the word "Yet" (Score:5, Interesting)
Douglas Kmiec's basis for supporting Obama is an interesting one, as well, because it seems he is one of the few people who actually has been listening to what Obama has been saying and watching what he has been doing. Obama is a Democrat who tells the underclass to stop relying on the state, being particularly critical of the culture of dependence that has harmed the African American poor over the past several decades. This doesn't make Obama a conservative. He's not. But then, who is? Certainly not McCain.
Re:Well duh (Score:5, Interesting)
Then maybe you need to open you damned eyes and read quite a bit more.
Maybe you should go back to the 80s when Mr. Gore allowed his wife and her friends in the PMRC to have special senate hearings aimed at *BANNING* or censoring certain artists they deemed too explicit. Mr. Gore was more than willing to let his wife have her moraliztic diatribe at your expense, to attempt to restrict and control your freedom of choice.
Corporate State or Nanny State, this is what you are voting for.
Re:oh, how convenient (Score:1, Interesting)
Whatever the motivation behind the ban, the facts are at the time of the US invasion of Afghanistan the amount of heroin coming from the country was the lowest it had been in recent history and after the invasion it is at an all-time high. As a heroin addict currently on methadone maintenance, I will say if it were as plentiful 8 years ago as it is now I would have had no need to get on methadone as it is easier and cheaper to get now than it has been in the 15 years since I began using (to say nothing of the hoops MMT patients have to go through thanks to government regulations that make it easier for many people to continue using rather than seek treatment). Given how many heroin addicts were created in Vietnam, I worry about how many more addicted service members we will see coming back from this war where it is so much more plentiful.
- one nation, under surveillance
Re:Well duh (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Well duh (Score:3, Interesting)
If you can make a reasonable, unfounded, and simply ignorant link to terrorists on any basis, it is perfectly alright to circumvent the constitution.
I think if the constitution needs to be trampled on to stop terrorists, then we are lucky to have this emboldened administration down on all fours playing twister on it.
Re:I call bullshit (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:No shame (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is people wanting to feel honest (Score:3, Interesting)
Basically the organized criminals have discovered what the RIAA and MPAA never seem to work out, which is to say that people will pay for the ability to feel legitimate in their purchases.
Sure the legal justification is shaky at best(and in some places purchasing stolen goods can get you jail time), and the funds are going to people who are likely more morally repugnant than the record industry, but people pay it.
Re:Well duh (Score:3, Interesting)