Instead Of Hiring Film Crew To Make PSA About Out Of Work Film Crews, ICE Just Reruns Someone Else's Video

Well, this is just bizarre. You may recall that late last year, NBC Universal worked with New York City to create a silly "anti-piracy" propaganda video that was not even close to accurate. It amusingly claimed that there is "no such thing as a free movie," while using YouTube, a free video platform... for free. We were left scratching our heads, a few weeks back, when pointing out that Homeland Security's ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) was now using the same video on its YouTube account -- stripped of all references to New York City.

Well, as part of World Intellectual Property Day, ICE has flat out lied and is pretending that this video is a "new" PSA that it's put together, and which it will now be placing on the domains it illegally forfeits, without any sort of adversarial hearing.

Shouldn't we be just a bit concerned that Homeland Security's ICE group is placing a video, financed by NBC Universal, which makes blatantly false statements concerning copyright law and the impact of copyright infringement, on domains that it has seized illegally? Even worse, the press, who should know better, are simply parroting the claims from ICE that this is a new PSA from ICE. It's not. It's from NY City at the urging of NBC Universal. It's also not accurate.

Of course, what would be funny, if it weren't so sad, is that ICE's John Morton thinks that this video will "educate the general public about the real consequence of IP theft." That's doubtful. As has been explained over and over again -- including in the recent SSRC report -- the issue is not education at all, but better business models. This kind of propaganda is simply laughable and its insulting that Morton thinks the American public is so stupid as to be fooled by false statements about intellectual property.

In the meantime, though, can we point out the serious irony here: ICE and the feds are apparently too freaking cheap to pay for the creation of their own anti-piracy PSA about putting video crew people out of work. Yes, ICE could have hired a nice film crew, like the one in the video that will be put out of work due to "piracy." But, instead, it just used a video that was already made... meaning it didn't actually help put anyone to work. The film crew that the Stop Piracy in NYC site originally highlighted as being at risk due to piracy... are they getting any money from ICE?

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Source: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110426/17131514046/instead-hiring-film-crew-to-make-psa-about-out-work-film-crews-ice-just-reruns-someone-elses-video.shtml

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