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“. . . one of the problems that we have had is insufficient protection for intellectual property rights. That’s true in China; it’s true for everything from bootleg DVDs to very sophisticated software. And there’s nothing wrong with other people using our technologies. We just want to make sure that it’s licensed and you’re getting paid.”

In March 2010, the investigation into Megaupload began. That month, Obama forecast tougher action, saying:

“We’re going to aggressively protect our intellectual property. Our single greatest asset is the innovation and the ingenuity and creativity of the American people. It is essential to our prosperity and it will only become more so in this century.”

The talk of aggression around IP and copyright suited those in the copyright industry. CNet’s Greg Sandoval talked of “leaders in the US film, music, video game and software industries” complaining of how “piracy and Internet file sharing mean the loss of US jobs and poison the economy”. In June 2010, the White House released its Joint Strategic Plan On Intellectual Property Enforcement — a statement of how the US intended to meet threats to its economic well-being from outside its borders. The strategy said there would be targeting on “foreign-based and foreign-controlled” websites that infringed US economic property rights. It stated:

“The use of foreign-based and foreign-controlled websites and web services to infringe American intellectual property rights is a growing problem that undermines our national security, particularly our national economic security. Despite the scope and increasing prevalence of such sites, enforcement is complicated because of the limits of the US Government’s jurisdiction and resources in foreign countries.”

So now piracy was being defined as a matter of “national security”. Did that mean bootleg movies were worth going to war over?

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