Pro-RIAA comic hopes to scare file sharers with bizarre legal fantasy

[villager]

Pro-RIAA comic hopes to scare file sharers with bizarre legal fantasy

Threat Level reports on an "educational" comic strip distributed to students across the country by a non-profit called the National Center for State Courts. It tells the story of a student arrested on criminal charges for file sharing. As that premise somewhat suggests, it's packed with misinformation. But hey, she gets a public defender!

In the story, Megan Robbins is criminally charged as an industrial-scale commercial pirate. In consensus reality, the recording industry sues file sharers in civil courts after making settlement offers. The strip also confuses federal with magistrate courts and presents a courtroom scenario that would never occur in real life.

It's the Pascal's Wager of antipiracy arguments: who cares about the truth when you might burn in hell? I submit that the war is lost when you're reduced to publishing Chick Tracts.

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http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/08/21/proriaa-comic-hopes.html

[Runcible Spoon]

1. this kind of tactic failed in the "Drug War" and it will fail here too.

whoever is in charge of this propaganda campaign needs to get a new bag of tricks or just get fired already.

All this will do is spawn a bunch of amusing parodies. Not entirely a bad thing!

[baldguy]

2. 2000 music files?

What a slacker.

[Greyhound]

3. I'd like to ask some of these moran's just how much more their labels

are paying them now that they are suing their fans?

Are you better off than you were before the Napster suit?