Tainted "Piracy" Statistics

newtley writes, "The music, movie, and software cartels claim 'piracy' is a Number One problem not only for themselves, but for the world as a whole and so successful are their continuing dis- and misinformation propaganda campaigns that they've been able to dragoon entire governments and police forces into acting as industry enforcers. But, says p2pnet, far from being at the top of the pile, movie and music piracy rank 16th and 20th, respectively, on a global index of illicit markets. (Software piracy ranks 7th.) And even those positions are subject to considerable doubt."

Re:Sounds like a great waste of time all around

[GregVernon]

Just to be obnoxious, or maybe just to tell you something, the U.S. Constitution isn't amended with Copyright laws; or any other laws for that matter. Laws are put into service via the terms written into the constitution however the constitution isn't changed. One can add amendments by introducing it, then having a vote with all the states. If it passes by a 2/3's vote, it becomes an amendment.

Re:Sounds like a great waste of time all around

[Dr. Eggman]

If my historical degree from the History channel means anything, those drugs (1,3,4,9,11) became illegal well before the Big Pharma of today. The 'channel also had an interesting contention that the pressure to make them illegal was born out a combination of racism, prohibition movements, and misinformation. Today, well maybe its Big Pharma keeping it going, but personally I think its politicians looking for an easy issue to agree with voters. Mind you, I mean both Liberals and Conservatives; I'll not have my opinion dumped on one group and not the other.

That said, the constitution is an evolving document, subject to the collective will of the people, for better or worse, yadda yadda yadda.

Re:Sounds like a great waste of time all around

[Heir Of The Mess]

As much as I hate to step on the toes on someone advocating civil liberties there is a thing I would like to argue with you about.

You seem to be saying that all drugs are harmless. Tell this to any father whose daughter has been introduced to drugs like Cocaine at a party, gotten addicted, travelled down the path to where she has to do unspeakable things for money to buy more, and then eventually died from an overdose or suicide. I think you'll have an argument on your hands. I've seen this happen. It's horrid. You can't group all drugs in the same backet. Drug pushers destroy lives for their own profit, and they have some pretty devastating, instantly addictable weapons in their arsenal that they use to draw young people, particulary girls, into their net.

I guess you could say that people should be allow to make the choice about whether to be enslaved by drugs, but often young people don't understand the nature of the enslavement until it's too late. Experience is often something you get after you needed it.

Re:MPAA and congress

[Neitokun]

You don't seem to get the point. The MPAA was INTENDED as a lobbying party. Why would lobbyist be in southern CA? They obviously would want to be near the politicians. They may work for the movie studios, but their job is in DC.

Re:Sounds like a great waste of time all around

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that drugs don't have inherent risks, it's more that criminalizing them does nothing to prevent addiction. When drugs were first criminalized, it was because a whopping 7% of the population was estimated to be addicted to drugs. Now, close to a hundred years later, after many billions of dollars have been spent, and organized crime (gangs, mafia, etc) have been given control over these insanely profitable items leading to gang violence, filling and overfilling our prisons, underprivileged sectors of society have been demonized, etc etc etc... we have finally brought our national drug addiction rate down to... 7% of the population. That's why the drug war is not morally justified... if the resources funneled into fighting drugs with the police force had been channeled into public education, treatment and rehabilitation, and most of all improving the quality of life of citizens at risk for developing addictions (Read about rat park [wikipedia.org]) there might have been a significant decrease in addiction rates, but the current policing model does NOTHING to prevent addiction.

push back at least a little

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, stop using the word "piracy." It is specifically chosen to make the deed seem worse than it is.

"duplication" is the correct word. "Data duplication," "software duplication," "music duplication" etc.

The word is accurate, and does not have weird suggestions of moral equivalency to rape/murder tied to it.

Just start using it. It's not hard.