File Trading and Terrorism

File trading may fund terrorism
Many excerpts below. The MPAA wants to muddy the water and tar P2P with the same brush as organized mass duplication plants that are pirating works outside the country. See Cringely's How BayTSP is Enforcing the Digital Millennium where we learn of the company that is logging P2P transactions...
How Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Is Likely to Change Big Media which mentions Microsoft research on P2P.
The follow up: Reader Reflections on Peer-to-Peer and Big Media

But when subcommittee chairman Lamar Smith, a Texas Republican, asked Malcolm for examples of cases where file trading was connected to terrorism, Malcolm said he couldn't give concrete examples. "It would surprise me greatly if the number were not large," Malcolm added. "This is an easy enterprise to get into; the barriers of entry are very small, and the profits are huge."[...] Malcolm also called the creators of "warez" file-trading organized criminals, although he admitted warez fans aren't motivated by money. Many warez groups, who distribute pirated commercial software over the Internet, operate in a very organized fashion, Malcolm said, with a hierarchy based on how much individual members contribute to the group. Much of the pirated material on the Internet comes from warez groups, Malcolm suggested.[...] 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.