State attorneys general team up to scare you from “content theft sites”

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PSA is titled "Be safe on the Internet to Protect Your Family."

Fifteen state attorneys general have teamed up with a pro-Hollywood group to launch a campaign aimed at dissuading the public from visiting file sharing sites.

To be sure, it's true that ads and other content on piracy sites can infect unsuspecting visitors with malware. But these attorneys general, in conjunction the Digital Citizens Alliance (DCA), really want you to know that visiting pirate sites can ruin both your life and your family's life. The scary black-hooded hacker on their video messages says it all.

"Hackers use pirate websites to infect your computer and steal your ID and financial information, or even take over your computer's camera without you knowing it," the top cops from the states say in the PSAs. The PSAs are appearing on social media, radio, and television this summer.

Nowadays we all have to worry about cybersecurity. Hackers are always looking for new ways to break into our computers. Something as simple as visiting pirate websites can put your computer at risk.
The DCA, for the uninitiated, has immense monetary ties to the content industry. Still, it bills itself as a "consumer-focused group that looks at how to make the Internet safer."

The group applauded the attorneys general for highlighting the dangers of visiting "content theft websites."

"Criminals are exploiting stolen content by baiting consumers to view videos and songs and then stealing their IDs and financial information. It should be a wake-up call for consumers," the group said when announcing the anti-piracy campaign days ago.

That said, the states' top cops aren't the only ones warning the public about the dangers of torrent sites. The Federal Trade Commission in April issued its own warning.

We recently downloaded movies from five sites that offered them for free. In all five cases, we ended up with malware on our computer. Generally, it served up a slew of unwanted ads.
And if that’s not enough to make you pause, downloading pirated content is illegal.
As for the new PSA campaign, here is a list of the participating attorneys general:

AZ: Mark Brnovich
CT: George Jepsen
DC: Karl Racine
HI: Doug Chin
ID: Lawrence Wasden
IN: Curtis Hill
KS: Derek Schmidt
KY: Andy Beshear
LA: Jeff Landry
MT: Tim Fox
NC: Josh Stein
ND: Wayne Stenehjem
OR: Ellen Rosenblum
SD: Marty Jackley
WI: Brad Schimel

Variety says that the DCA is planning more PSAs with attorneys general in other states, too.

The DCA said the PSAs were "the first-ever national campaign to alert citizens of the risk of visiting pirate websites."

But this isn't the first time Hollywood won the alliance of a state's top cop. Remember "Project Goliath?" That "attorney general project," as it was known to insiders, was a secret Motion Picture Association of America mission to get the AGs to attack Google for displaying links to pirated content on its search results.