U.S. Atty. Gen. Says Piracy Threatens National Safety

SOURCE
"The U.S. Attorney General wants wiretap authority for piracy investigations, adding that counterfeit goods and intellectual property theft generates profits for organized crime and terrorists."
AND ALSO FROM THE SAME SOURCE
"Piracy not only affects the health and safety of Americans, it also threatens the country's national security, according to U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

"Every new technology we create can be abused -- whether it's a common identity thief looking for a new way to steal your bank account information, or an international terrorist looking to advance a murderous plot," he said.

Mukasey said that counterfeiters make parts that support the nation's infrastructure. During a speech at the Tech Museum of Innovation in Silicon Valley this past weekend, he indicated that federal authorities will strengthen efforts to battle piracy.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office already has announced agreements to work with foreign governments on patent protection. The Department of Justice also cooperates with foreign law enforcement groups to crack down on hackers and intellectual property thieves. It boasts about 230 federal prosecutors devoted to hacking and intellectual property theft.

He noted that piracy often crosses multiple jurisdictions and said that can help, rather than hinder, enforcement.

"There's more than one way to skin a cat, and our international contacts give us more options to do what needs to be done," he said. "
===snip==============>
OK...so we not only have the RIAA hot on the trail of dead people and single moms, but now the Homeland Security have them in their sites now.

I actually think I suggested this might happen about three years ago, but now, 1984 is NOW kiddies!
~Code

Does anyone really still think, boycotting is the way to fix this? It hasn't curbed piracy in the least, and if you don't boycott all of it, electronics sony makes as well for example, your not boycotting. If your kid loads his ipod with music he purchased from apple, your not boycotting.

Are you starting to get it yet people? The boyccott isn't working!

You want this to stop? really? Then load that fucking ipod with tracks you didn't pay for! I don't care if it's indie freely given away, or riaa tracks you got off torrent. If you pay for it, or if you pay to watch a movie, you pay for ppv, you go out and rent a movie, your fucking yourself..

Paying for it isn't going to make you a nice guy. SOrry, but nobody cares.

Your'e wrong.

By trading verboten RIAA tracks on p2p and BitTorrent you create the situation where the RIAA gets to have $5 or more dollars via compulsory licensing from everyone with an Internet connection. (Giving them control of the digital music marketplace!)

If the boycott isn't working it is YOUR fault for not participating.

Trevor Plantagenet

March 28th, 2008 at 11:39 am

I’m sorry to say this is the music theft community reaping what they’ve sown. If you don’t believe that copyright enforcement of feasible and/or ethical, if you believe in the “marginal cost approaching zero” argument entitles you to free access, then this is going to be the end result. The idea that the media industry is just going to roll over and die isn’t just wishful thinking, it’s delusional. Every argument for why the RIAA is wrong or music labels are obsolete can be used by these entities to strengthen their cases for new laws in Congress, in individual lawsuits, and in proving their worth to their current and future artist clients, because all you’re doing is perpetuating the legitimate perception of the internet community as being hostile to the rights of artists and copyright holders. I fully expect to see an media industry lawyer citing posts like this in a testimony before Congress to prove that their point that the Internet community has no respect for copyright law and that extraordinary enforcement and taxation are necessary to protect American businesses.

Trevor's comment has the flavor of what I'm trying to say to you RaidHHI.

They boycott is working. Revenues to the music majors is down, down, down. Admittedly, it is not so much of a boycott as it is people spending their money on entertainment products that provide greater value.

However, we must have follow-through. Don't allow them to impose the monthly tax. In the end, the customers of the ISPs will have to make their voices heard, or be taxed.

"By trading verboten RIAA tracks on p2p and BitTorrent you create the situation where the RIAA gets to have $5 or more dollars via compulsory licensing from everyone with an Internet connection. (Giving them control of the digital music marketplace!)"

I don't know where things are where you live, but I'm already forced to pay them something whenever I buy blank media, whether I intend to use any of it for audio or not.

They get enough from me, and they were already doing that well before the mp3 scene existed.

If you think this has anything to do with copyright your an idiot. This is just another step toward global government, period (as I've said YEARS before if you dig up my old threads about this). This will be severely abused and you will see huge increases in arrests and more now police break ins into homes to confiscate computers because all they have to say is you clicked on a link, (even if inadvertent, your still guilty) and you're life is over, period.

Enforcing this bs will mean less people they will have to kill in the streets in the coming total martial law--just make everything a crime, no bullets needed to kill you because they can make money off of you instead via TOTAL illegal asset forfeiture. This is all made possible because of the inside job that 9-11 was. ushering in the global framework necessary to fast track a total police surveillance state, total destruction of the Bill of Rights and Constitution. See:

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=106773181

http://www.proudprimate.com/Placards/PNAC_circ.JPG

Former Air Traffic Controller Robin Hordon speaks out on on 9/11, NORAD

http://www.communitycurrency.org/robin.html

Btw, with "piracy" considered terrorism, you have no habeus corpus rights, no right to an attorney, nothing. Under the Military Commissions Act they can immediately STRIP YOU OF US CITIZENSHIP AND DECLARE YOU AN ENEMY COMBATANT, and have you secretly arrested, flown off to an offshore torture camp, and secretly executed.

The people aren't playing f*cking games, boycotting would ahve to be applied to a lot more important things than boycotting music and films folks. You want to boycott something more important? Boycott the damn Airlines then. If you have ever flown since that fake liquid terror scare, then you are willingly a slave--I don't care if it was to go to a funeral of a family member, you willingly took it in the ass if you've flown since.

The entire general public in the USA should go ON STRIKE and demand TOTAL EVISCERATION OF ALL ONCONSTITUTIONAL EXECUTIVE ORDERS, SO-CALLED LAWS (PATRIOT ACT, JOHN WARNER DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACTS, MCA, VETERANS DISARMAMENT ACT, ET.AL.) We won't do that though and that's why they've gotten away with building 800+ concentration camps in the US as reported in mainstream news San Francisco Chronicle (google it). You better have guns and armor piercing ammo, because the guys coming after us won't be wearing cotton/polyester shirts.

"If you think this has anything to do with copyright your an idiot. "

Fuck! I was beginning to think people with any real intelligence were not present here. Seems I was wrong. Someone gets it!

Does anyone really still think, boycotting is the way to fix this? It hasn't curbed piracy in the least...

Uh, boycotting has nothing at all to do with curbing piracy. It's purpose is to deprive the record labels of income. Whether the boycott is working or other factors come into play, their income dropped another 15% last year.

People who are truly boycotting are not downloading or sharing RIAA music. Any government action which is being taken, considered, or even if it's just spouting idle threats, none of that is aimed at us.

If the government starts taking more intrusive measures against people who download or share RIAA tunes, well, that's not us. We don't fill our kids' iPods with music from the Apple store, we make them dig through DMusic, or listen to the stuff that was purchased before all this foolishness started -- just like we do.

Personally, I've always been much more interested in convincing the musicians to boycott the major labels than persuading the public to do anything. Bands like Radiohead and Nine-Inch Nails -- even McCartney's deal with Starbucks and the Eagles/Walmart setup -- are now providing visible examples of why this makes more sense each and every day.

The artists leave and the young acts are warned off. The audience follows the artist. The RIAA has nothing to sell.

CD shipments have dropped more than 50% since 2000; the artist rosters at the major labels have been cut back even more severely. Again, not because of us, even though this is exactly what we wanted to see happen.

From that perspective, things are finally starting to move along a little and there is very little the RIAA can do to change it.

If they want to define exchanging RIAA music as terrorism, I'm not seeing a down side.

The RIAA wants their music off the internet but that's only because they are total fucking idiots. If it happened tomorrow, they would suddenly have no one to bully, threaten, extort and no reason for the media or Congress to continue to listen to their endless rendition of "They're stealing our stuff."

If it weren't for the pirates, the RIAA would be irrelevant and powerless, and the Attorney General wouldn't be spouting off nonsense like this.

The pirates are actually in the power seat right now. They're the ones playing the Us and Them game with the RIAA. For the rest of us, The lines on the map move from side to side. We're just spectators.

Without consideration to the motives, reasoning, intent or whatever of the pirates, being a pirate has escalated from "anti-corporate die-hard music fan" to "terrorist". The next level is "shoot on sight."

Why? To repeat myself, the RIAA wants their music off the internet but that's only because they are total fucking idiots.

Giving them what they ask for is not only legal, it is also the thing that would destroy them. They would cheer and claim victory, but without the free distribution that the pirates provide, no one would hear their music and fewer than ever will be inclined to buy it.

Lawsuits, terrorists? If the pirate business ain't what it used to be, find a new port. What one culture considers to be raping and pillaging, other cultures might call "Saturday night."

Of course, this has nothing to do with the boycott, which is going quite well, judging from RIAA sales figures and the artist exodus from the labels.

If we could just get the pirates on board....

"The RIAA wants their music off the internet" -- or, they might be content in taxing isp clients, which is practically anyone using a computer.

The tax/levy (whatever it ends up being) of music on the Internet is the RIAA's dying hope. Pirates make it more likely that the RIAA will survive because it gives them the excuse they need to cry to congress and the public for the laws and agreements they need to make it happen.

Correct!
The dinosaurs could save themselves that way, methinks.

If the RIAA music disappeared from P2P, they wouldn't even be talking about a monthly fee.

I think the RIAA itself needs to disappear before we begin talking about ANY of this "Jukebox In The Sky" stuff. Otherwise, I see no way of keeping the RIAA's evil monopolizing ways from taking it over and bringing the same ruin they brought to radio, Tv, physical media distribution and every damn thing else.

This has been my point all along from the beginning.

But alas!

This Attorney General isn't a very clever person is he... Obviously well paid by the fools he is speaking out for...

Just how long has it been since the U.S. has had an Attorney General that respected the individual liberties of the Constitution?

Re: "Copyright violations now are terroristm" and "Feds overstate software piracy link to terrorism"
Yep, they'll use any workable excuse to expand government and further the cause of internationalism (globalism)! Is there still anyone left out there who doesn't believe there's a concerted push to get to the new world order?
And is there anybody who doesn't know that the new world order is a subdued phrase for world government?