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   Niklaus Pfirsig January 2, 2013 Reply

   In the prohibition days, many powerful criminal elites maintained a safe distance from the prosecutable offense by acting as managers and “keeping clean”. Murder and mayhem, extortion, bribery theft and other crimes were delegate to the lower ranks, while the kingpins were untouchable. What brought down the crime syndicates, however, was their failure to pay taxes on their ill gotten gain. It was the IRS going after the biggest tax evaders that made a difference.

   In the 70’s, and 80;’s things changed. The IRS started going after small businesses and individuals, often for honest errors in filing taxes, while ignoring the most brazen tax fraud by organized crime. I guess it was more cost effective to hold less politically powerful as examples, to terrorize the more honest taxpayers, than to go after the heavily lawyered-up criminal element.

   Many see a parallel in the anti piracy prosecutions. There was a time when ip piracy solely referred to the unauthorized production and sale of copyrighted materials. Since the rise of a very profitable royalty collection industry, the concepts have been redefined to support and maximize the profits of what are essentially,middlemen. Now, the focus is on scaring the customers into paying the middlemen for multiple times for the same thing, while mostly ignoring unauthorized publishers.