US Sailors board Somali pirate ship
More on Piracy today, this time from Associated Press
.. the ship was an Indian merchant vessel that had been taken over by pirates and .. the vessel's master said he had been scared that the pirates would kill the crew.
Piracy is rampant off the coast of Somalia, which is torn by clashes between militias fighting over control of the troubled African country. Many shipping companies resort to paying ransoms, saying they have few alternatives.
How much money is paid in ransom every year to these pirates?
Given the high level of threat of violence it's not surprising they "resort to paying ransoms" - but I wonder - what happens to crews whose shipping companies refuse to pay ransoms?
Violence, intimidation and terror - these are the real tools of piracy - not the tools outlawed by the DMCA.
About time we tackled the piracy issue and renamed so-called "software pirates" something a bit more honest and less emotionally loaded.
The RIAA do not have to fire "warning shots" across the bows of "software pirates" nor do they lead armed boarding parties to capture "pirate" ships because there is a very real risk of death for the crew.
Unlike the sailors of the USS Churchill, they do no risk their lives in shark infested waters, except the sort of sharks that hang around Beverly Hills.
To equate "software pirates" with the real pirates who loot, kill, maim and rape with impunity in the waters of third world countries is an act of intellectual dishonesty designed soley to whip up sympathy for the hollywood fatcats who wish to foist ever more restrictive DRM arrangments onto the general public.
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