Rob Ragan @ www.allboysvideo.com writes to The Free Speech Coalition:

Dear Joanne and Diane,

In the meetings we had in Cleveland, the issue was again brought up regarding piracy. I have come up with an idea that may truly allow us to get the government involved to put a stop to it, and it wouldn’t be very
hard to do. I said there that rather than just talk about it, we need to
actually do something about it, so I’m taking it upon myself to get things rolling, and hopefully this can start a nice little trend to allow us to start fighting back!!

All of us within the entertainment industry are effected by this. TV,DVD, Film(box office) and Music. We all have something in common whereas we’re all people that own entertainment companies, and entertainment companies that are loosing billions every year, due to these torrent sites, and file sharing, and tube sites.

Every time a torrent site allows one of the films I produce to be downloaded, I lose that money from an individual that otherwise would likely have bought that film, but didn’t have to because this site had it, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Now that I found out, I can only email that entity and tell them to take it down, or face legal action…they say ok, take it down, then repost 5 other films from my company, because right now there is NO serious repercussions for these actions, although they’re clearly acts of theft!

Just like when people first started getting carjacked. it was at the time a very small penalty, so nobody was afraid to do it. Today it’s considered a major federal crime, punishable by 25 years in prison…now, do that to the owner of one of these sites, it’s only going to take 1 or 2 public convictions, and I have a feeling that will be the end of this shit once and for all!

There should also be theft charges brought on against the takers of these films that they’re knowingly stealing by downloading them, without paying for them! That too would make someone think again before just taking it!!

With all of these companies calling for “bailout” money from the government, we can actually give ourselves bailout money, by simply being able to make the money generated by the things we produce, and not allowing it to get onto these sites, where they’re able to get everything we’re all producing free of charge! I can only speak for myself i this, but I can honestly say that I do not own my company to NOT make money. The production studios i represent film for the financial benefits, and every time one of our films is posted on one of these sites, we lose that much in sales, thus the government loses that much more in tax dollars!!

If we, as a united front of entities we to get together, do a rough draft with what our companies are likely loosing every year in paid revenue, then show what tax dollars it’s costing the government, they may have to do something to prevent this from happening, as this economy is something the new administration in desperately trying to fix, and frankly they would plug a serious amount of bleeding if they were to put into law that if individuals are caught doing this, they will get STIFF penalties.

Not small fines, or bullshit that just has them turn around the day after they’re caught and start another site, but real penalties, that would start plugging these huge holes, and frankly would increase the tax revenues to where the government would actually be able to use to continue recovery.

Please pass this along, and see what it’s going to take to get it going, as you will have the full support of several large companies in our own industry, and frankly I cannot see other portions of the entertainment industry not getting involved to force our government to impose different bottom line severe penalties immediately.

Once we as a nation get this rolling, to follow the lead of some of the other countries, such as Sweden, I truly think we can put a stop once and for all to this bullshit of allowing people to steal our content, costing us all an unbelievable amount of money, we will then ignite the rest of the countries where this has become rampid!!

I have copied several reporting agencies on this email, and I ask that they please consider posting this. There is no reason to include my name, as I’m certainly not trying to be an attention whore here, I’m merely trying to get action on this…so please just post it as being on the web folks!

Thanks for reading this, and I’m looking forward to us all finally doing something more than bitching about this issue! LOL

Best wishes,

Rob