As an aside comment: Pursuing online pirates is less demanding and safer than pursuing Somali pirates, bank robbers, run away shopping carts and old Jewish lady j-walkers.

The fines may be harsh, even up yo a dozen doughnuts.

JSMD

1.) “Gangs and even terrorist groups have reportedly entered the piracy market because the penalties are much lighter than traditional crimes such as drug dealing [...]”

I don’t know about the folks at ABS-CBN, but I would kind of personally prefer the corner boy down the road to be slinging pirated copies of Transformers than crack or whatever the drug of choice is. Individuals high on drugs are a threat to themselves and others and depending on how bad they’re hooked and onto which drug, possibly cannot be a contributing member of society. Individuals watching a pirated movie are a threat to … Hollywood’s bottom line and should have no problem holding down a job etc.

Also, random question… Why do they need to use the higher profits they make from selling pirated media to buy drugs? I thought they’ve switched from selling drugs to selling movies due to higher profits & lowered penalties.

2.) “Los Angeles County police say that piracy is one of their top priorities.”

Is anyone surprised by this considering Hollywood is in their backyard? I wonder if Laredo Texas Police would agree that piracy is the #1 priority.

3.) “They hope to make the local neighborhoods a little safer by tracking down these pirates and potential terrorists.”

So everyone who pirates is a potential terrorist… Or are at least supporting/funding terrorist activities… “Nearly 70% of all Europeans download or stream films for free, a new study from the European Commission reveals” (source: https://torrentfreak.com/most-europeans-download-and-stream-pirated-movies-140214/ ). In other words, 70% of Europe pirate meadia in some fashion. So basically 3 out of every 4 Europeans support terrorist groups. That means along with education and health care being affected by piracy, those bastards are now taking down the aviation industry. 3/4 of all of Europe needs to be on the No-Fly Terrorist Supporter list. How are European Airlines expected to make any profit with such a limited customer base?

I would say though, that Britain, France and Spain have had a history of mass colonization (large scale theft of natural resources and subjugation of other nations and people), warfare and interference in the matters of other nations, so there is more than enough blame to go around.

And let us also not forget that USA was the one who then proceeded to support Iraq and Saddam with weapons and promises, another dictator, in a fight against Iran which was now an enemy of USA and for good reasons. And we know how Saddam ended up, especially after he tried invading Kuwait, a neighboring dictatorship no different than any USA criticizes today for “being a dictatorship” because he failed against Iran and went rogue and mad no thanks to USA. about ~15 years later he ends up dead after the US invasion of Iraq.

Shit, we could continue this with S. America too where there would be no communism EVER if USA didn’t give half of the continent a good damn reason to accept anything and everything that was an enemy of USA, even if it was another shitty ideology that went against American ideals just to spite them.

No nation in history has created more betrayals, deceits and turdpiles and fuckups than USA. None that i know of.

Lets just cut to the chase. MONEY is evil and should be banned. Everyone carrying money is a terrorist because money can be used for everything.

JSMD