Stealing Music Ain’t Hip, Kids
Last October, the National Center for State Courts released a pamphlet aimed at letting teenagers know that downloading music without paying it for it is a crime, using the most effective method known of reaching that audience - designing it as a comic. If you squint a lot it kind of even looks like bad rape porn.
Luckily for us, Wired got a hold of this little diddy and graciously uploaded it in PDF format, either helping NCSC reach their goal of education or ironically breaking copywrite laws themselves.
Justice Case Files 1: The Case of Internet Piracy features all of our favorite stereotypes about comics and piracy. Witness the smart (but uninformed girl) get caught up in the terrible web of stealing music from the internet! Revel at her visible minority friend who wouldn’t dare engage in such a crime! Laugh as they attempt to portray recording companies as “fair” purveyors of justice! Be baffled as they try to explain that downloading songs is exactly like the government seizing your property! Enjoy before Wired gets sued!
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…You know, I try not to use the word Propaganda. All too often anymore, it’s a loaded word meant to imply that something is subversive when it’s otherwise harmless.
I make an exception in this case.
How much fucking pot did they have to pass around to get that put into print?
That’s a fucking lie. Jesus Christ, it’s one thing for some fucking douchebag spokesman to make a dumbass comment about sharing being a fucking crime, but to know this comic went through enough fucking eyes and got green-lit anyway fucking kills some of my already low faith in the fucking human race.
File Sharing isn’t a fucking crime. Jesus Fucking Christ on a Crutch. Cases where someone is brought into court for file-sharing are civil, not criminal trials. There’s no jail time associated with it. The fucking paperwork says “{Recording Company} vs {Person}“. The state doesn’t fucking prosecute it.
And this’s the thing; I’m not a fucking lawyer. It isn’t like this’s some fucking legal tangle where oh, I might be wrong. Ask any fucking competent lawyer; Plot B of the comic is fucking bullshit. And they could’ve salvaged it so easy; make the girl pass out CDs of music for five bucks a piece. There you go; the rest kinda falls into place. But as-is, it’s a fucking clusterfuck where someone opened their mouth, let stupid fall out, and some jackass was there recording it.
What’s funny is that they don’t get ANYTHING right about downloading music. Apparently people go to some website, download what songs they want and upload songs they don’t want anymore so other people can have it. …WTF?!
For reals. I don’t think internet file sharing has functioned in that matter since Hotline was still popular. Or maybe they’re referring to the old FTP servers? Either way, their mental image is about a decade out of date. Even if those older structures still exist, they account for probably less than 1% of all file sharing… and it’s been like that since Napster started.