Rich Fiscus
21 Feb 2008 22:57
Pretend you're a representative for the RIAA and you're tired of taking on file sharers in court, and of course as always you're looking to make your problems somebody else's responsibility. So far your attempts to get additional criminal provisions to make those people prosecutors' problem have failed. So what's your next move? You might put together a presentation telling those same prosecutors that the music pirates you've been taking to court happen to also be crack dealers.
Although it sounds like the plot you might expect to see written during the writer's strike, it turns out that this is exactly what RIAA lawyers have done. In an attempt to show prosecutors the value of piracy charges for going after dangerous criminals for other offenses the RIAA has produced a video in association with the National District Attorneys Association where RIAA representative Frank Walters says "When you buy a CD, would you like it with or without—the with is enclosing a piece of crack or whatever the case may be."
While it seems likely that there are large scale distributors of pirated CDs, DVDs, and other goods who are also major drug traffickers, it seems unlikely that these same people are the ones selling them one off the the back of a truck or out of the trunk of a car.
The real question is whether the RIAA can convince the prosecutors that they need more authority over copyright offenses that are currently civil affairs. This would include all the cases that the RIAA has brought for file sharing to date. If they can make the connection in the lawyers' minds it may only be a matter of time before the kind of legislation that the entertainment industry has pushed for in the past, where many current civil offenses become criminal matters, becomes a reality.