In an attempt to convince U.S. prosecutors to crack down on music piracy, the National District Attorneys Organization has said that downloading music will lead to “everything from handguns to large quantities of cocaine [and] marijuana,” as well as terrorism, according to published reports.
Click to see the leaked RIAA video of the conversation with the D.A.
I know that the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has been tough on people, especially college students. Everyone has seen those commercials that have a message saying something such as, “Would you steal a purse? A car? Well, why is stealing music any different?” All these commercials leave students with are sore sides from laughing so hard at its ridiculousness.
But saying that downloading music will lead to drugs and gun use is just plain crazy.
It wouldn’t be hard to venture that mostly everyone at Fairfield University has downloaded music before, and I’m pretty sure that none of them are terrorists.
Sure, I guess that terrorists may be more inclined to engage in other illegal activities such as downloading pirated materials, but to say that everyone who downloads music is more likely to be a terrorist is a bit extreme.
The RIAA training video that released this “discovery” holds no statistics whatsoever that give validity to this hilarious assumption. Now, sarcastic people all over the world are claiming that they killed people or sold drugs for their music, and rightfully so.
Lobbyists have done this same old song and dance before, but at least some of their accusations had merit.
I can see the connection between violent video games and violence, or maybe plastic surgery shows and the increasing the demand for plastic surgery, but music and terrorism just don’t correlate that easily.
I mean, I haven’t seen any videos of Bin Laden rapping or members of Al-Qaeda singing Frank Sinatra lately.
Next, they’ll be saying music piracy leads people to want to have a peg-leg and a parrot on their soldier.
But the RIAA isn’t completely wrong, I guess.
The process of buying physical pirated material from the black market may have a stronger connection to other underground illegal activities, such as drug dealing.
The thing is, the RIAA isn’t specific in its accusations, causing everyone to believe that the RIAA thinks people are crack-dealing terrorists with a grudge against society. However, the truth is that we’re mostly just middle-class Americans who don’t want to buy a $15 CD to hear one good song.
I’m not saying that piracy isn’t stealing, but it should be recognized as a small crime when compared to drug dealing and blowing up buildings.
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