Somewhere in Atlanta there's a dumpster filled with $20 million worth of shredded CDs and DVDs, destroyed by RIAA, MPAA, and Atlanta Police officials last week in what was the largest destruction of seized property in recent U.S. history.
Destroyed at the Atlanta Police Department Headquarters, the illicit property seized in a series of raids was estimated to have a market worth of $20 million, though it's impossible to imagine anyone paying market value for an advanced rip of Nas' Nigger packaged in a Ziploc® baggy with a grayscale inkjet printout of the cover. But you just never know.
"Individuals selling cds for cheap on the street corner are not just small-time peddlers -- they are fronts for larger criminal organizations that steal music by the millions of cds," stated Brad Buckles, Executive VP of the RIAA's Anti-Piracy League. "These groups are also often involved in other illegal activity such as narcotics and weapons trade [and] threaten the health and safety of Atlanta's neighborhoods." And by saying so, Buckles effectively overstepped boundaries by assuming far more than he's paid to assume.
Fulton County Sheriff Myron Freemon, District Attorney Paul Howard Jr., and U.S. Director of MPAA Anti-Piracy Operations Kevin Suh (all in attendance for this monumental day of justice) couldn't have agreed more.
Defense for the unprecedented destruction of perfectly good material also included the high costs of piracy to the U.S. economy. Reportedly, global music piracy has (dubiously) cost the U.S. economy $12.5 billion in lost revenue, 71,000 jobs, and $2 billion in wages to U.S. workers, at an estimated $1.6 billion annually. The worldwide motion picture industry purportedly lost $18.2 billion in 2005 alone as a result of piracy, attributing $7 billion in loses to internet piracy and $11 billion to hard-good piracy, such as bootlegging and illegal copying.
"We want to encourage consumers to purchase DVDs from legitimate retailers and from legal download sites to ensure they are buying genuine high quality copies of the movies they love and to help protect one of America's greatest exports," said Suh. So, the best way to "encourage consumers" was a massive police seizure and destruction event? Boy, I'm encouraged already.
