p2pnet - rss feed: MPAA, RIAA, NYPD ‘raid’
p2pnet.net News:- A while back we ran a spoof article in which we had the MPAA and RIAA joining forces.
“Two thousand and four will go down as the year the entertainment industry went to the wall in an all-out bid to wipe out file sharing on the p2p nets,” we wrote. “Permanently. As part of the actions, two of the entertainment industry’s principal faux police enforcement organizations are to merge, we can reveal.’
Now, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) boast proudly that together, they were able to inveigle two tax-payer financed police units into nailing a CD / DVD counterfeiting operation.
Under the headline, MPAA & RIAA Coordinated Raids Wipe Out Two Illegal Duplicating Labs, they brag they “assisted” the New York Police Department’s Bronx Task Force and Manhattan District Attorney Squad on April 25.
Labs? Makes you think of an evil drug bust instead of CD copying. And MPAA & RIAA Coordinated Raids? Since when did vested interests “coordinate’ official police operations?
“As the Bronx raid was occurring, additional members of the MPAA and RIAA were simultaneously assisting members of the NYPD’s Manhattan District Attorney Squad in the execution of a search warrant,” they say.
However, for an industry that’s in the process of turning America’s institutions of higher education into sales units and industry cop organizations, that’s probably small potatoes.
Three people were arrested and seizures included 25 DVD burners, 54 CD burners, 1,148 DVD-R’s, 5,250 CD-R’s and various raw materials, say the MPAA and RIAA in a joint statement on the RIAA site.
They don’t say how much of the seized equipment was made by Sony, a member of both the record label and movie studio cartels.
The entertainment cartels call this kind of crime ‘pirating’ and the perpetrators, ‘pirates,’ although no ships are involved and there’s not an ocean in sight. But it catches the media eye.
They also link ‘pirating,’ to file sharing, calling people who exchange music with each other online ‘pirates’.
The two have absolutely nothing to do with each other. But it makes it easier for the RIAA, in particular, to routinely subpoena innocent men, women and children, and deliberately mis-label p2p file sharing, in which no money changes hands and no sales are lost, as a ‘crime’.
Counterfeiter shot and killed
Counterfeting, or ‘pirating,’ as the MPAA, RIAA and, thanks to the latter, the mainstream media cal it, is possible only because of the staggering amount of physical product that’s available. If p2p technologies were used for distribution, sales, and so on, the ‘pirates’ would suddenly find themselves seriously short of physical product. And there would be huge cost savings which the entertainment industry could theoretically pass on to their customers and artists.
The “main subject” was charged with infringing New York’s Penal Law Felony Trademark Counterfeiting, not with piracy.
In the meanwhile, 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.
On at least four occasions in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Staten Island, task force officers, “arrested the vendors, confiscated the illegal movies and then allegedly received gratuities of several hundred dollars from the MPAA itself or its investigators, the source said,” says a report.
In another ‘pirate CD’ Staten Island Task Force raid in 2003, a man was shot and killed by New York city police.
Stay tuned.
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet.net
See:-
spoof article - RIAA, MPAA merger plans, p2pnet, November 11, 2004
RIAA - MPAA & RIAA Coordinated Raids Wipe Out Two Illegal Duplicating Labs, April 26, 2005
MPAA payoffs - NYPD cops received MPAA payoffs, p2pnet,
small potatoes - University p2p ‘report’, p2pnet, August 25, 2004
May 2nd, 2005 at 3:39 am
Counterfeiting huh? Hmmm wonder if we could charge the RIAA’s member organisations with counterfeiting music, artists, and bands?
Nothing that’s come out in the last few years has been in any way “real”.
May 2nd, 2005 at 6:15 pm
Okay, so they FINALLY went after someone breaking laws… Making counterfit cd/dvd’s and selling them - GOOD… Those are the only people they should be going after and not little Jimmy and his Grandma for downloading a few kids songs and crochet patterns.
Just my opinion lol..
_-Jile-_