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A speech was recently brought to my attention. It was one given by my MEP, Arlene McCarthy (an MEP for North West England). In it she makes some quite extraordinary claims. One of these jumped right out at me and punched me between the eyes, and it's a really astounding allegation. (Well, its one of a number of such assertions, but those will be covered in a different piece at a later date.) This statement that hit me contained two fields for which i have done a modicum of study, over the years, to try and make sense of it, from the fractured and often biased views of the publicly available reports and comments. Those fields are terrorism, and what's commonly called 'piracy'. They had a profound impact on my life in the early 90s, as i was very close to the Warrington bomb when it went off, and a few months before that, a friend was improperly arrested 'on suspicion' of pirating Amiga games. He was, of course, innocent, and had been 'informed on' for using copies of games which he'd made himself, from his store bought copies (so his younger sister, who also used the computer, couldn't wreck his expensive originals through incautious handling) which was perfectly legal, and a perfect example of 'fair use'.

I digress though. Terrorism and piracy, in the early 90s. Those two key events mentioned above have triggered my interest and study in those fields off and on for over 10 years. Thus it is, we come to a statement made by the honourable Arlene McCarthy, stating that for many years now, time travel is not only theoretically possible, its been achieved in practice. To quote, here is a section from her speech given at the "Industry Trust for IP Awareness, DVD Piracy North West Campaign Launch" on Friday 19th November 04.

There is evidence that terrorist's first attempt to bomb the World Trade Centre was partially financed with the sales of pirate DVDs and CDs on the streets of cities across Europe. (source, http://www.arlenemccarthy.labour.co.uk/ViewPage.cfm?Page=13415, paragraph 12)

So, what that is saying is, "we have proof that people sold DVDs and CDs in European cities, and sent some, or all of that money, to some terrorists to blow up the World Trade Center, the first time it was bombed." Great. Time travel is not only possible, but practical, and cheap. Let me explain, for you, our readers, in the form of a timeline:

• Up to late 1992 - Sales of pirate CDs and DVDs (Source: Arlene McCarthey's speech)
• December 1992 - Bombers use a storage locker to store the chemicals needed for the explosive (Source: trial records)
• February 26th 1993 - The first World Trade Center Bombing occurred at approx. 12:18pm (Source: multiple, including BBC, CNN, JTTF)
• September 1995 - DVD Consortium established to establish the DVD format, and provide a standard specification. 10 companies founded it. (Source: http://www.dvdforum.org/about-mission.htm )
• March 19, 1997 - Lumivision becomes the first company to release DVD-Video titles in the United States, beating Warner Home Video's rollout by a week. DVD versions of Africa the Serengeti, Antarctica, Tropical Rainforest, and Animation Greats ($24.95 each) were officially released by Denver-based Lumivision. Some stores report having received the titles a day earlier. Three of the four offerings are IMAX films. (Source: http://www.dvdfile.com/news/special_report/features/timeline/timeline.htm)
• At least 6 months later (mid october 1997) - pirate DVDs go on sale (no source, but by this point, sales were increasing, although this is probably still early, since it is another month before Pioneer releases the first non-commercial DVD recorder and media)
• December 1997 - Pirate DVDs sent more than 5 years back in time to early/mid 1992, to finance terrorist bombings, by selling to people who won't have players for at least 4 years yet.

So, EITHER someone has Time travel, a lot of money to throw about, and incredible salesmanship (to sell a product that won't be usable for years) OR someone's telling lies. I contacted Ms. McCarthy recently, asking about her having "made deliberately inflammatory, misleading, or otherwise inaccurate statements purporting to be fact" and her reply to me was:

"Any issue you have with the facts in my speech would be better taken up with the organisations that produced them, the NWDA on the statistics concerning creative industries and the enforcement authorities or trading standards for facts and figures on counterfeiting."

So, she can make statements about how 'pirates are terrorist supporters' and then announce them in a big press fanfare, and yet she doesn't bother to check her facts - even the basic ones about what YEARS things happened. If one of our elected representatives can let such a big error go by so easily, and not notice it, what else is going past her? If the 'facts' she hadn't bothered to check had also said "There is evidence that Mark David Chapman's assassination of John Lennon was partially financed with the sales of pirate CDs on the streets of cities across Europe.", would she have let that go? (For the record, John Lennon was killed 8 December 1980, whilst CD's weren't introduced until Fall of 1982 in Europe and Japan - a much shorter gap - source: http://www.oneoffcd.com/info/historycd.cfm)

If they're making such bold and barefaced lies about piracy, is it because they have no real truths to say? The dropping huge profits generated by the grand monopolising and high pricing of a cheap commodity they own, due to popular opinion, and change in opinions, and technology is causing them financial harm. Politicians being used to try and withhold change to fairness isn't uncommon. One of the biggest examples is the American civil war; change plantation owners to record labels, and slavery to song/movie distribution, and you'll see what i mean. The exploitation of a medium they did not produce, yet own, for their own gain, whilst being unwilling to change with the times. Go back 20+ years, and how many heard what the same sort of companies were saying about the VCR? That people were using it to record TV shows, and that was financially harming. Look at the figures they put out now, or rather REFUSE to put out. The most reliable estimate comes from Screen Digest, (http://www.screendigest.com) a British data company, which worked out that the home video divisions of the United States studios garnered $11.4 (£6.08) billion in wholesale revenues from the $24.6 (£13.12) billion that non-US consumers spent buying and renting home video products in 2004. This they argued against, and sued to prevent. They adapted, and grew. The majority of members of this 'trust' make money from the sales of video cassettes, some have their existence down to video tapes, and the betamax decision. However, they only embraced the technology when they couldn't bully and had to adapt. We are seeing the same again, and again the companies refuse to respond appropriately, preferring instead to bluster in an attempt to keep the status quo.

As a footnote, it should come as no surprise that in her "Declaration of Members' Financial Interests" for 2003 (the last year I could find) she was a guest of the IFPI (that's the people that collect royalties on all music recordings in the UK) at MIDEM, a conference that describes itself thus: "MIDEM puts you right at the heart of the action. Next January, over 9,300 music professionals will meet for another five days of networking, deal making, market information, live music and parties.", or that she had meetings with Sony, Disney, MGM and others at the start of August, followed by 'hospitality only' provided by the Motion Picture Association/IFPI. As my father used to say "there's no such thing as a free lunch". You only get corporate hospitality, if the corporation is expecting to get something from you. (source - http://wwwdb.europarl.eu.int/ep6-dif/2173_14-07-2004.PDF)

To keep abreast of what is really going on, keep checking back here to piracyisnotacrime.com; where our facts are verified, reliable, and their sources quoted.

B.J.