335 Brazil Net cafes closed in raid
p2pnet news | Freedom:- The entertainment cartels routinely use scarce taxpayer funded enforcement resources as unpaid corporate copyright cops and in one of the newest, and most egregious, examples, civil police in Sao Paulo, Brazil, raided 335 Lan Houses, as Net cafes are known.
In a foretaste of things to come, the Associacao Anti-pirateria de Cinema e Musica (APCM), the joint IFPI/ MPA anti-piracy group, as the cartels describe it, "provided significant intelligence to the police which helped make these raids a successful operation," brags Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s IFPI (International Federation of Phonographic Industry).
The IFPI is to be merged with the Big 4’s RIAA, meaning we can expect more APCM-type actions, not that cooperation between the movie and music cartels is anything new.
As p2pnet posted back in 2005, "much, of not most, of the information used in this kind of ‘operation’ comes from the cartels. And many, if not most, of the cartel cops are ex-police officers.
"Two NYPD cops are being investigated by NYPD Internal Affairs for allegedly accepting MPAA payoffs to arrest people who allegedly sold counterfeit DVDs."
In Brazil, "A total of 600 police officers from 93 districts of the Special Operations Division participated in the raids," the IFPI boasts of the Lan House farce.
It’d be interesting to see a cost (to Brazilian taxpayers) and manpower breakdown of this ‘operation,’ as well as a study on how it may have adversely impacted normal operations both while it was being put together and implemented.
Also See:
merged - EMI dumps IFPI: RIAA, IFPI merger, January 11, 2008
anything new – RIAA, MPAA anti-p2p cops, December 23, 2005
ex-police officers – MPAA, RIAA, NYPD ‘raid’, May 1, 2005
MPAA payoffs – NYPD cops received MPAA payoffs, April 22, 2005
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January 30th, 2008 at 10:31 am
I’m really glad they decided to go after the real criminals, instead of spending their time and efforts on something pointless, like Brazil’s growing child prostitution.
Based on other articles I’ve read, it doesn’t look like most of the cafes were directly involved in piracy. However, people were using their machines for that, and the IFPI nailed the cafe owners because they let people burn discs and use detachable storage devices. Nevermind the fact that any cafe that prohibited such activities would be quickly out of customers and out of business.
Good job for shutting down a lot of family owned businesses. That’s called progress!
January 30th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
meh i guess people can be bought into becoming jerks anywhere in the world
January 31st, 2008 at 2:12 am
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; The media corporations DO NOT CARE if they ruin people’s lives, stifle innovation and generally act like a bul in a china shop. The only thing they care about is getting their own way.