Furthermore, they believe it also supports people's ability to buy drugs and guns

Aug 28, 2014 14:37 GMT  ·  By

In what may be the most ludicrous statement in a long time, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department claims that online piracy aids drug dealers and terrorists.

TorrentFreak picked up the story from media conglomerate ABS-CBN which has a fight to pick with pirates, especially since it’s been going after website owners who link to pirated streams of its programs.

Aside from the lawsuit it has filed in Oregon looking for millions of dollars in damages from two local residents, the company also slams the defendants like they’re some kind of terrorists, and worst off, they’re also backed by LA police.

The article at the center of this whole thing claims, without any sort of evidence, that piracy “aids ad abets organized crime.” Basically, gangs and terrorist groups have dropped their weapons and entered the piracy market because the penalties are much lighter than traditional crimes and the profit could be higher.

As TorrentFreak points out, not even the MPAA and RIAA, two groups that have been fighting piracy for years, would dare make such claims with no evidence.

“[Piracy is] supporting their ability to buy drugs and guns and engage in violence. And then, the support of global terrorism, which is a threat to everybody,” LA County Assistant Sheriff Todd Rogers told the publication.

He goes on to put online pirates in the same bandwagon with terrorists, saying that the police needs to identify the bad guys and “take [them] out of the community so the rest of the folks can enjoy their neighborhood and their families.”

At this point, it’s quite possible that we might not be discussing the same thing here because, say what you will about online piracy and copyright infringement, but putting this infraction on the same level as terrorism and gang activities is inaccurate and irresponsible.

As mentioned above, ABS-CBN launched a lawsuit against two individuals, trying to get out millions because they set up a website streaming their content on the Internet.

Jeff and Lenie Ashby are being accused of serious crimes if we’re to believe the statements of the LA County Assistant Sheriff. The website in question was created by Jeff to help his wife, originally from the Philippines, enjoy materials from their culture that are unavailable to them in other sources.

“Since these materials were already on the web, we did not think there would be a problem to simply link to them. No content was ever hosted on our server,” the man told the court .