YouTube removed a video showing RIAA officials discussing use of ...

that are removed usually are replaced by a note that the copyright owner requested a takedown. A YouTube spokeswoman told us the site’s action went beyond pulling the video. “The user’s account was suspended due to multiple copyright violations; thus, the video was removed when the account was suspended.” The video actually wasn’t among the user’s violations -- just collateral damage, she said. The hour-long “training video,” as it has been dubbed, has surfaced on torrent sites, ridiculed by RIAA critics for trying to link music piracy with homicide, drug- dealing and terrorism. A two-minute streaming clip remained posted Friday afternoon at gadget blog Gizmodo. The video was co-produced with the National District Attorneys Association for use in its “In Trial” series for members. In the video, the NDAA’s Jim Dedman interviews Deborah Robinson, counsel for the RIAA antipiracy division’s central region and former Philadelphia prosecutor, and Frank Walters, a former Maryland state trooper who heads RIAA investigations for the central region. Music piracy “might lead to you a drug investigation,” Robinson says. Purchase of pirate CDs by officers working undercover “might allow you to have probable cause to a drug house,” she declares. RIAA piracy probes have found links to “terrorist organizations,” she says: “There’s a number of [federal] cases we're working on right now.” Asked by Dedman if paroled criminals “might be gravitating” toward piracy, Walters says, “More often than not.” Such types are often “recidivists” who find piracy useful as an adjunct for other crimes, he adds. A way to sell drugs with outlaw CDs is to ask a prospect “With or without?” Walters says. RIAA raids conducted with police have found guns, narcotics and counterfeit money, along with pirate CDs, he says: “It really goes the gamut on what can be found during one of these investigations.” The RIAA filed no takedown request with YouTube, a spokeswoman for the trade group told us. David LaBahn, director of the NDAA’s American Prosecutors Research Institute, told us the video seen online must have been ripped from a DVD the group sent prosecutors in December. The NDAA wasn’t aware of the postings until we asked, he said. The copyrighted material is meant only for prosecutors, police, and investigators. Were defense lawyers to see it, “How good is that training going to be?” he added. The NDAA is “very liberal in our copyright” but doesn’t authorize public showing of the videos. The NDAA won’t flinch at filing takedown requests, LaBahn said: “If we can find it, we will stop it.” In regard to the video’s inclusion of an RIAA official describing how the group gets its investigators qualified as expert witnesses, LaBahn said that to a court, an expert is “anyone who knows more than an average individual, so certainly when you talk about piracy… I don’t think it’s unusual at all that an association investigator would be able to qualify,” any more than a banker would be in a wire fraud case. Critics like Johan Pouwelse, assistant professor at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, mock what they term the RIAA’s limited grasp of P2P network technology (WID Feb 22 p5).