p2pnet news view | RIAA News:- We never thought we’d be saying this, but, Apologies to the RIAA.

It doesn’t look as though its minions had an obvious hand in the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) comic book debacle.

We say ‘obvious’ because we still strongly suspect they may have been involved somewhere, somehow.

Anyway, in the original story on the NCS’s Case of Internet Piracy (also the first), p2pnet all-but accused Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG’s RIAA of being behind it.

NCSC director of communications and marketing  Lorri Montgomery was also implicated, by default.

But she had nothing to do with the comic’s creation,  says a reliable source. She arrived on the scene only after it had been completed.

So, we apologise to her as well.

There’ll be more on this tomorrow, but for now, as unlikely (unbelievable?) as it may seem, it appears the NCSC simply went through the RIAA-initiated media stories on the evils of file sharers and file sharing and parroted them.

Certainly, no one with any knowledge of intellectual property okayed it. Who paid for the comic? Excellent question.

Meanwhile, Dan Tynan is also exonerating the RIAA, in the process making it clear the Megan farce isn’t the only one.

“Last week I wrote about how the RIAA and its comic foray into warping the brains of our nation’s youth via a ‘graphic novel’ about the evils of Internet Piracy,” he says, going on »»»

The source of the comic book was the National Center for the State Courts, a 37-year-old nonprofit org that gets a big chunk of its funding from state and federal agencies.

After speaking with NCSC’s Lorri Montgomery, I no longer believe the NCSC is in cahoots with the RIAA — at least, not directly. Montgomery was even kind enough to send me the next installment in the Justice Case Files comic series, titled “The Case of Stolen Identity.” After reading the second Case File I do believe that the NCSC —- or the folks they hire to consult on and write these things —- spend a lot of time on Planet Clueless.

In “The Case of Stolen Identity,” the Garcia family is busy managing a litter of adorable puppies when Maria Garcia foolishly clicks on a phishing email and plugs her account information into a bogus Web site. Next thing they know, the Garcia’s bank account has been drained and Maria feels like a tool. So far, so good. The comic actually does a good job of clearly explaining how phishing emails work. But then it takes a turn toward fantasy land.

First the Garcias go to the bank manager, who’s extremely understanding and assures them that victims of identity theft are fully protected and they won’t lose a dime. (In fact, average out-of-pocket costs for victims are now nearly $700, according to Javelin Strategy & Research.)

The kindly bank manager tells them a fraud alert will be placed on their account — like that’s going to protect them from now on. (A fraud alert only requires that someone proves they’re you before they open a new account in your name; it doesn’t do squat to protect existing accounts that have been compromised.)

Then they go to the cops, who jump on the case and immediately locate the bad guy. To wit:

Because Mrs. Garcia kept the message, we’ve been able to trace the electronic signature on the e-mail to his Internet Service Provider. And get this — the provider is only six blocks away from the police station!

Thank god for those electronic signatures. Where would we be without them?

So they trot on over to the friendly ISP with a subpoena. Presto, they find their man. Says the police investigator:

The suspect is a professional website designer. He fits the profile of someone who could easily create a spoof site of the bank.

Those sneaky Web designers — they’re simply not to be trusted.

Now for a little reality check.

Identity theft is one of those low-priority crimes that almost never gets much attention from the cops. About 1 in 700 ID thieves are caught and prosecuted, according to Gartner. I’ve talked to easily a dozen ID theft victims; they spend most of their time trying to convince the bank and the police that they weren’t in on the crime.

Phishing scams are run by organized criminals, not the guy down the street who designs web sites for a living. They use botnets to deliver the phishing spam and to host the bogus Web sites. They’re often located halfway across the globe. In fact, most ID theft happens the old fashioned way — somebody steals your wallet or a letter from your mailbox containing your name and Social Security Number. So this scenario is pure hokum.

OK, it’s a comic book. The Hardy Boys Mysteries weren’t known for their gritty realism either. And it’s mostly designed to show how the legal system works (at least, how it works on TV).

But the NCSC could have provided some useful information about what the Garcias should do when their identity is stolen. Instead, as with the music piracy comic, it spreads misconceptions. The net effect is to scare clueless people away from the Internet instead of teaching them how to use it intelligently.

My favorite part of the comic is the last panel. Justice has been served, the Garcias have recovered their fiscal health, and the puppies are still adorable. Megan —- the dimwitted star of the “Internet piracy” comic —- shows up to claim one of the puppies for her grandma while she’s off in India “studying pharmaceuticals for six months.”

Maybe she meant pharmacology. Or maybe she just plans to spend the next six months in a Oxycontin-induced haze.

But that’s still better than swapping music files, right?

Dan Tynan – Tynan on Technology (beta)
[Tynan slugs his personal blog 'Tech talk without the usual BS.' He's been writing and editing stories about technology and its discontents for more than 20 years. During that time he's been an editor in chief and an executive editor for national magazines, written for more than 50 publications, and taken home a closet full of awards. He's also the author of Computer Privacy Annoyances, soon to be a major motion picture starring Ashton Kutcher.]. .Stumble It!

---

Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!

Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php

---

Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details. Download here.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 12:25 pm and is filed under RIAA News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

HOME

Viewed 4708 times