The Null Device

If you Pirate MP3s, You're Downloading Communism Terrorism: Walt Disney Corp., a key proponent of restrictive mandatory-copy-control legislation, fires a salvo in the anti-file-sharing propaganda war with a cartoon about the evils of file-sharing. Judging by the description, it sounds rather heavy-handed and propagandistic; then again, that is filtered through the perceptions of the article's author, who is probably of the penguinhead persuasion.

Btw, speaking of the MP3/Communism propaganda poster, I was thinking that someone should do a version with Stalin replaced by Osama Bin Laden and "Communism" by "Terrorism". Given the RIAA's recent push to equate MP3 copying with terrorism (and the MPAA labelling DeCSS as "terrorware" before that), it would be quite apt.

There are 2 comments on "":

Posted by: Jimbob http://www.the-fix.org Tue Oct 23 12:47:52 2001

Terrorism is everyone's favourite crime at the moment, and it seems to be constantly confused with...well...everything else.

Terrorism IS defined as "calculated use of violence, primarily against civilians, to coerce and intimidate civilian populations or governments through instilling fear" - I'd love someone to explain how music or software copying, or even hacking, fits that description. They may be morally defensible, they CAN be crimes, but terrorism? I don't quite think so.

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org/ Tue Oct 23 12:51:30 2001

The rationale put forward at the DeCSS trial was, I believe, that the act of releasing source code for decrypting DVDs could cause grievious harm to the US economy by allowing anyone to rip off content companies, and thus was an act of economic terrorism. Presumably in the way that blowing up critical infrastructure in a country would be.

And then there's the question of the meaning of violence; i.e., some anarchists hold that all government is organised violence.