Piracy funds terror attacks

Piracy funds terror attacks
Johnny Depp to blame, apparently
By Nick Farrell: Monday, 31 March 2008, 10:14 AM

THE US Attorney General Michael Mukasey has claimed that counterfeiting and piracy is funding terrorism.

Yep, all those students downloading Coldplay tracks are actually responsible for financing the bad guys who are shooting at our boys in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Mukasey was speaking to Silicon Valley executives at the Tech Museum of Innovation, in defence of the US' bizarre software patent system and copyrights.

He claimed that terror groups are taking their cues from organised crime and increasingly funding their operations from intellectual property theft, he said.

Terrorist groups, "view IP crime as lucrative and see it as a low-risk way to fund other activities," Mukasey said.

Strong stuff. However, it might be because he had just met with lobbiyists from Apple and Adobe just before he got on the stage.

AP said that he did not elaborate how piracy was generating any money for anyone. But elections mean that you need all the cash you can get.