Ashcroft Equates File Sharing To Terrorism, Drugs And Corruption
from the yeah,-okay... dept
It's been rumored for a while that the Justice Department was looking to start helping the entertainment industry defend their outdated business model, and here it comes. Attorney General John Ashcroft is now saying that the FBI will begin cracking down on intellectual property violations. Showing just how far out of touch he is, Ashcroft claimed that the FBI's fight against intellectual property misuse "must be as forceful and aggressive and successful as our response to terrorism and violent crime and drugs and corruption has been." Of course, I'd imagine that plenty of people would laugh at the idea that any of those responses could be categorized as a "success." In fact, with many of them, you could make a credible case to call them dismal failures. Chances are, though, Ashcroft is right. The war against file sharing will be just as successful. In other words, a ton of our taxpayer money will go into fighting it, but the end result won't do a damn thing to stop what they're trying to stop. Personally, if we have to be throwing money away on such bogus "wars," there are plenty that belong well above the list before reaching file sharing.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
And Your Solution Is?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: And Your Solution Is?
The solution is for someone to knock some sense into politicians, so they realize that this is a business model issue that the market will settle -- and not one that somehow needs government protection.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Pheer this
http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/SJG/
And Craig Neidorf - the E911 document.
http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/eff/pub/Legal/Cases/SJG/Phrack_Neidorf_Riggs/
[ link to this | view in thread ]
so frustrating
it just makes me sick... Not the get up and do something sick, but the "Bugger it to hell, nothings gonna change anyhow, i might as well accept it sick."
all i see are erosions of freedom. Never rebuilding of freedom.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Hit 'em where it hurts
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: And Your Solution Is... a reexamination of pol
[ link to this | view in thread ]
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in thread ]