Entertainment Industry Redefines Organized Crime To Its Liking
from the well,-it-is-organized... dept
Remember last month when the entertainment industry came out with it's big scary warning about how commercial counterfeiting of entertainment products was increasingly being taken over by organized crime in the US? Not many people seemed to question where that data came from. So, now that people are calling them on the claim, they're basically redefining organized crime to mean any crime that involves a couple of people, which (of course) makes it "organized." However, while they know they gave everyone the impression that Tony Soprano was out there counterfeiting CDs, it seems like only a few small-time thugs have been caught -- and most seemed to be doing it on their own, rather than as a concerted mob effort. Of course, you can't be too surprised that the entertainment industry would be overhyping the story. They've done it plenty of times in the past -- including when they pretended they shut down a legitimate DVD copying plant that wasn't actually shut down, claiming they seized $30 million worth of illegal material, which was both legal and valued at about $25,000.
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What's so unusual about this?
The RIAA also says that all this illegal downloading penalizes recording artists, where the numbers actually show that CD sales were actually increasing. When CD sales actually started to decrease, most likely due to a stagnating economy and/or the public's perception of an industry that sues its own customers, they blame it on Kazaa.
When they sue these "illegal downloaders," does the RIAA give the money to the recording artists that were supposedly penalized? Do they have a list of artists that were being uploaded, and portion out the fines to the people involved? I've never heard of this being done. If not, what is all this RIAA bleeding heart nonsense about those poor artists if they don't try to make things right?
Very little of what the RIAA says has any basis in fact. "How can you tell the RIAA is lying?" "When it says anything at all!"
Why am I not surprised that "organized crime" as defined by the RIAA is actually "a couple of people with no connection to RICO-style corrupt organizations?" Because the RIAA is the one making the claims.
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RIAA stands for...
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Media and Entertainment companies
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