New Campaign Suggests Sending “Copied Currency” To MPAA and RIAA For Piracy Losses
I have to admit that I had a really good chuckle when I first read this story but once you get past the legality problem (which you can if done right) you have to admire the audacity behind this new campaign called “Send Them Your Money“.
The them is the entertainment industry trade groups MPAA and RIAA and is based on the idea that these organizations love to claim that pirated copies of software are actually stolen copies – especially when it comes to creating the unbelievable costs annually due to pirated software.
The point that is trying to be made is that if the RIAA and the MPAA are trying to suggest that copies of software; which don’t take away any value from the item they are copied from, are actually the original file then they should be happy to accept copies of money. The logic being that they say copies are exactly the same as the original so then a copy of a dollar bill should be exactly the same as the original dollar bill.
The people behind the project say that this has nothing to do with any perceived legitimacy of piracy but rather the ludicrous position taken by the RIAA and MPAA on piracy.
Now when it comes to copying money there is always the question of legality which Eric Limer at Geekosystem qualifies quite nicely
“Now wait,” you say, “isn’t copying money illegal?” Not if you do it right. Reproducing images of money (in the United States at least) is perfectly legal under three conditions:
- The copy has to be one-sided
- The copy has to be the wrong size. It has to be at least 75% smaller or 150% larger than an actual bill
- You have to destroy the negatives, graphic files, or “digitized storage mediums” after their final use
The last one is a little unclear as it seems to apply specifically to physical copies of money, but it seems relatively reasonable to assume that their final use is getting emailed to someone, or posted on a website, they’re fine so long as they adhere to rules 1 and 2.
I would love to be a fly on the wall at some MPAA or RIAA office when they start getting envelopes full of copied money. Priceless.
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About the Author
Steven Hodson Steven has been around the tech world long enough to see most of the stuff we think of cool happen before which leads to a certain bit of cynicism that has contributed to him being known as the cranky old fart of the Internet. Besides sharing some of the goodness that he finds with you here at 42x you can also find him curating some digital goodness at Winextra (tech type stuff) and Rotten Gumdrops (for your daily dose of WTF).
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