This is precious synchronicity that must be preserved.

Only today, the latest astroturfing gang, by the very impressive sounding name of Australian Content Industry Group, has sprung on us its latest deranged, hyperbolic, catastrophist spin about piracy. Oddly enough, google knows nothing about this group, nor its stated acronym. Surely, something that impressively sounding and so obviously important cannot be overlooked by Google, but Bing doesn’t know about them either. They can’t just not exist. Unless they were just made up on the spot. But surely not. The big media cartels would never stoop to such indignities surely? The derangement is spattered all over the local press –

Nation of unrepentant pirates costs $900m*

ALMOST 5 million Australians illegally downloaded films, television shows, music and other content online last year, a new study shows.

And the National Broadband Network is set to encourage Australia’s apparent boundless enthusiasm for internet piracy. […]

Piracy cost the core content industries – music, film, television, software and video games – $900 million last year. That will rise to $5.2 billion by 2016, with an estimated loss of $18 billion between 2010 and 2016.

The impact on Commonwealth revenues last year was $190 million, which will rise to $1.1 billion in five years for a total loss of $3.7 billion in five years. There were 8000 fewer jobs in the core content industries last year as a result of piracy, with the employment impact also predicted to rise dramatically by 2016.

This patent nonsense doesn’t even deserve the dignity of a response. But it must be responded to (yet again), but not by me. These propaganda outbursts are a full-time job for folks like EFA et al. The sheer absurdity of Hollywood and RIAA alternating press releases bragging about record breaking revenues with ones trumpeting their imminent collapse due internet thieves is unfortunately lost on your average mug punter that relies on newspapers for “news” (ha!). The attitude of the various MafIAAs is very much that anyone who owns a computer is a criminal – it’s just they haven’t all been caught yet, and they will spare no expense in changing that and installing a despotic, totalitarian digital police state, where your every action, no matter how trivial, is monitored, logged and reported. Your freedom offends them. It must be expunged.

But this press release looks just gorgeous sitting next to this item –

Slumdog Millionaire actress Rubina Ali loses home in fire

Slumdog Millionaire star Rubina Ali has been left homeless following a devastating fire in a Mumbai shanty town.

The 12-year-old, who portrayed a young version of Freida Pinto’s character Latika in the Oscar-winning film, lived with her family in the Garib Nagar settlement in India’s largest city.

Around 2000 people have been displaced by the fire, which also injured 21 residents as it tore through the slum on Friday (March 4th) evening.

Ms Ali told reporters that she had been watching television with her family when the alarm was raised by others in the community.

Her father Rafiq Ali explained that they had salvaged what belongings they could as they evacuated their home, but were unable to return due to the ferocity of the blaze.

Ms Ali added: “It’s all gone. Even my best clothes, everything. My pictures at the Oscars, all my memories – all gone.”

That’s right – this kid who was a star of an Academy Award winning multi-million dollar movie hit is living in an Indian slum. That burnt down.

That’s how much the big content industry actually cares about the artists they claim to represent. All this howling and wailing and gnashing of teeth about the imminent apocalypse and starving artists being robbed by internet thieves.

Yes there are thieves about. They’re called the RIAA and MPAA. Who in their countless thousands of legal perprosecutions of, amongst many others, cripples, children and dead people, have yet to prove they have returned even 1 cent of the revenue from the law suits to an actual artist. These worthless sacks of shit let this kid live in a slum after she helped earn them US$141,319,195 (as of 24 May 2009)

You. Fucking. Parasites.

Hollywood and the recording industry must be destroyed. Especially for the artists’ sake.

* – You have to assume they are talking in terms of profit here. Let’s assume a ballpark figure 20% actual profit. That translates into $4.5 billion dollars in turnover. Australia has a population of 20 million. That assumes each and every person in this country, from the new born to those at deaths door, stole $225 worth of pirated downloads in the last year. These people are not just liars, they are also batshit insane sociopaths that will not be content until you are paying them a royalty for every single file you click. Because it’s their manifest destiny and holy covenant.