Piracy Funding Terrorism: Mukasey

The RIAA, MPAA, and anyone else you can think of concerned with piracy have a new friend: Attorney General Michael Mukasey. In a gathering of Silicon Valley executives and media at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California, Mukasey warned that piracy and counterfeiting profits are funding terrorism.

Some of his statements, as indicated in a DOJ transcript, were as follows:

First, there's the obvious economic threat -- I suspect that you in this room are far too familiar with this part of the problem.

Second, counterfeiting and piracy generate huge profits, much of it flowing to organized crime. Criminal syndicates, and in some cases even terrorist groups, view IP crime as a lucrative business, and see it as a low-risk way to fund other activities. A primary goal of our IP enforcement mission is to show these criminals that they’re wrong.

And third, in many cases IP crime can also pose a serious threat to health and safety. Fake products of all kinds erode consumer confidence in the marketplace, but the counterfeiting of products like pharmaceuticals and medical devices, auto and airplane parts, or electronics that go into our nation’s critical infrastructure, can present a real and direct danger to the public.

Prior to his speech, Mukasey met with representatives from Apple, Adobe, and other companies. Yesterday he met with Hollywood executives at Warner Bros. in Los Angeles. Friday was the last leg of a three-day swing through California for Mukasey.

Mukasey also indicated that the DOJ filed 217 Intellectual Property (IP) cases, a 7% increase over 2006, and 33% more than 2005.

Still, some of the places we really need to worry about IP theft, such as China, are places where the influence of the DOJ doesn't really amount to much. Still, today Mukasey said U.S. anti-counterfeiting authorities are working with the European Union, Asia, Canada, and even hacker-friendly countries China and Romania.