A new Hollywood-funded study has produced some remarkable findings, including a potential link between pirating movies and terrorism.
The study, “Film Piracy, Organized Crime and Terrorism,” found, “Moreover, three of the documented cases provide clear evidence that terrorist groups have used the proceeds of film piracy to finance their activities. While caution must be exercised in drawing broad conclusions from limited evidence, further investigation is a timely imperative. These cases, combined with established evidence for the broader category of counterfeiting-terrorism connections, are highly suggestive that intellectual-property theft — a low-risk, high-profit enterprise — is attractive not only to organized crime, but also to terrorists, particularly opportunistic members of local terrorist cells.”
This finding underscores an assertation last year by then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey who said intellectual property theft promoted terrorism.
The Motion Picture Association, the European counterpart to the Motion Picture Association of America, paid for the 182-page RAND Corp. study. If interested, you can view the full report here.
Wow. People who lose money when people pirate stuff, do a study on pirating, so that they can legitimize calling pirates terrorists. Not that I agree with piracy, but isn’t that just a little biased?
I say that by association Hollywood is aiding terrorists if they make movies people find profitable to pirate.
Saaay . . . perhaps that is the reason behind the many sequels; Hollywood is fighting terrorism by wowing to make nothing but crappy movies!
Pirating leads to the terror that the studios feel when they don’t get every stinkin’ penney.
That “study” is typical studio b.s.
Instead of funding b.s. “studies” like this one, and coming down hard on people in the States, why aren’t the studios and record labels going after CHINA and INDIA.
Those places are pirating stuff left and right and they’re selling it for profit.
“Pirating Leads to Terrorism”? They don’t think anyone buys that nonsense, do they?
Well, a lot of people here bought the “pot-terrorism” connection. And the “not like Bush=terrorism”, and “Dixie Chicks=terrorism”, and…
What’s next? Air and water aid terrorists so they too will be abolished? Everytime you pirate a DVD a glacier melts causing the sea levels to rise displacing people? Everytime you download a pirated MP3 you contribute to global warming because somewhere a server is processing the download? Give me a break!
Whatever. People who download for their own use, and not for profit are not terrorists. They’re not even Pirates. I wouldn’t even call them “thieves.” Especially with TV shows! I pay for cable! If I decided to record a show on my computer, not for profit, is that Piracy? If I just Videotape it? If I DVR it? No. So how is this different? It comes in over the same cable, just in a different form.
Movies may be a little different, but similar. In this recession going to the movies is an expensive proposition! Same with DVD sales! If I don’t think I’m going to like a movie, why bother buying it? I have downloaded movies I liked, then went out and purchased that movie later. And if I choose NOT to buy, but to download it, to sample it, what then does that say about that movie? Maybe that it’s CRAP. So maybe in some small way downloading movies is improving the overall quality of film making in this country. If you don’t want people to download your movies, make movies worth paying money to keep. Are you listening Uve Boll?