File trading may fund terrorism

"They are nonetheless responsible for a massive number of pirated movies, music, games and software in circulation each year, and represent a significant and growing threat to intellectual property rights around the globe," he said.

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Representative Robert Wexler, a Florida Democrat, praised the hearing for highlighting the "disastrous connection" between copyright piracy and organized crime. "I can't help but sit here and wonder ... if parents fully understand the ramifications of what it is to steal a movie or pirate a song," he said. "If more American parents understood the connection between the pirating of intellectual property and organized crime, I think then there'd be a much more effective public relations response in our own country to better appreciate the disastrous ramifications."

Wexler suggested public service commercials should highlight that alleged connection between piracy and organized crime, much like anti-drug commercials highlight the connection between the sale of illegal drugs and funding terrorism.

Part of the hearing rehashed complaints about file-trading by college students over P-to-P networks, covered in previous hearings and statements from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). No one at the hearing connected P-to-P trading with the financing of terrorism or organized crime.

Jack Valenti, president and chief executive officer of the MPAA, described a couple examples of copying operations that had been raided outside the U.S. , and he said 26 copying factories in Russia can copy 300 million DVDs and CDs a year. He claimed his industry is losing billions of dollars a year to piracy, although a couple of representatives also pointed out the motion picture industry had record box-office receipts in 2002.

Valenti predicted investors would stop investing in the movie industry if piracy is allowed to continue. He repeated earlier requests for Congress to pass new anti-copying laws.

Valenti also complained about P-to-P trading. "It's low risk. Nobody does anything about it," he said.

Representative John Carter, a Texas Republican, suggested that college students would stop downloading if some  were prosecuted and received sentences of 33 months or longer, like the defendants in the DOJ's Operation Buccaneer. "I think it'd be a good idea to go out and actually bust a couple of these college kids," Carter said. "If you want to see college kids duck and run, you let them read the papers and somebody's got a 33-month sentence in the federal penitentiary for downloading copyrighted materials."

The committee also spent a significant amount of the hearing listening to the testimony of Joan BorstenVidov, president of Films by Jove Inc., a small Los Angeles film distributor. In 1992, Vidov's company purchased the rights to restore and distribute a number of old Russian animated films, but Vidov accused the Russian Ministry of Culture of trying to redistribute the films without her company's permission.

"What fits the definition of organized crime more than a foreign government deciding to steal the property of a small U.S. business?" Vidov asked. "That is the worst kind of organized crime by the most powerful possible organization."

The Russian embassy in Washington didn't have an immediate comment on Vidov's or Valenti's testimony.