Ars Technica is commenting on a report that a lawyer for NBC/Universal said the US wastes too much resources and money fighting other crimes and not nearly enough, in his mind, fighting piracy.
NBC/Universal general counsel Rick Cotton suggests that society wastes entirely too much money policing crimes like burglary, fraud, and bank-robbing, when it should be doing something about piracy instead.
“Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned,” Cotton said. “If you add up all the various kinds of property crimes in this country, everything from theft, to fraud, to burglary, bank-robbing, all of it, it costs the country $16 billion a year. But intellectual property crime runs to hundreds of billions [of dollars] a year.” Cotton’s comments come in Paul Stweeting’s report on Hollywood’s latest shenanigans on Capitol Hill.
Are they smoking something over at NBC/Universal? Just when you start to think the lawyers for Hollywood couldn’t be any more ridiculous than they already are, they open their mouths.
Is it time to start ignoring burglars and bank robbers and focus on kids downloading Hollywood’s content? Please post your thoughts in the comments.
[Copyright coalition: piracy more serious than burglary, fraud, bank robbery]
[tags]intellectual property, intellectual property attorney, intellectual property law[/tags]
