Reefer Madness 2008

Here's about two minutes of a leaked RIAA training video. It's too over the top to have been spoofied. According to its host, www.gizmodo.com :

This is a leaked official RIAA training video produced with the National District Attorneys Association telling U.S. prosecutors why they should bust music pirates: Because it'll lead them to "everything from handguns to large quantities of cocaine [and] marijuana," not to mention terrorists and murderers!

The whole video is over 60 minutes long—these are just two of the more outrageous minutes with Jim Dedman, from the NDAA, interviewing Deborah Robinson and Frank Walters from the RIAA about the benefits of going SWAT on music pirates. At one point, Walters says the piracy/drug connection can be so bad that you get asked "When you buy a CD, would you like it with or without—the with is enclosing a piece of crack or whatever the case may be."

Nobody condones commercial piracy - but linking illicit CDs to serious drug trafficking, gun crimes, murder and terrorism may be a trifle hyperbolic.

Those of us of certain age may recall a not so great American film called Reefer Madness.

HK