GGL Wire

Hyperbole and scare-mongering were de rigueur at a weeklong “anti-piracy” conference in Hollywood.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Los Angeles Counterfeiting and Piracy Awareness Week began last Thursday and featured comments by many high-level politicos that could affect how you play. They included: Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; singer Mary Wilson of The Supremes; California legislators Howard Berman, Diane Watson and Brad Sherman; MPAA anti-piracy lobbyist Mike Robinson; former Dreamworks exec and Los Angeles City Councilmember Wendy Greuel; and Safwat Fahmy of SafeMedia Corp., which produces software designed to break P2P networks.

The best quote came from potential Democratic presidential candidate General Wesley Clark: “The next national security threat is the contaminated peer-to-peer networks.” The comment was quoted by SafeMedia to suggest that file-sharing helps the terrorists. Clark was referring to the remote possibility that sensitive national security documents could be disseminated by P2P.

Clark on CNBC in July:

“…what has to be done is first you’ve got to have the right policies and employees have to understand that they cannot have file-sharing hardware on computers they’re using to work. And then you have to monitor the peer-to-peer space. You have to actually see what’s out there and see what is being exposed. Then you have to track it back to the source and cut it off at the source.”

Berman quoted the usual exaggerated statistics on the illegal duplication of copyrighted material — from digital movie, music, software & videogame files, to clothing, auto parts and toys. “Counterfeiting and piracy are costing the U.S. economy about $250 billion annually, have led to the loss of more than 750,000 American jobs and needlessly expose consumers to dangerous and defective products,” he said. These estimates typically assume that every counterfeit product represents a lost sale.

Berman also asserted that lawmakers are seeking to hold ISPs responsible for the illegal file sharing of their customers. Such legislation would force ISPs to place onerous software restrictions on legitimate users and would cripple legal file sharing.

This week top BitTorrent search engine TorrentSpy blocked all U.S. users, after a judge ruled the site was required to turn over user information and an individual sued by the RIAA served a third party complaint against Kazaa and AOL, holding the P2P service and the ISP responsible for her alleged illegal downloads.