The Motion Picture Association of America says [PDF] the movie industry had its biggest year ever last year. This, despite the fact that folks like the “US Copyright Group” have gone after people for ruining said industry. Down is up, black is white, and the New York Mets are a well-run organization. → Read More
In an offense called “Operation Payback,” members of the Internet collective Anonymous have organized what seems to be anti anti-piracy movement. Dubbed by Torrent Freak as the ”protest of the future” the group has been pretty busy over the past 36 hours launching DDoS attacks on the MPAA, Indian anti-piracy site Aiplex Software and today both RIAA.com and RIAA.org. The attacks are apparently… → Read More
Some things just amaze me. Despite the fact that people are paying more for theater tickets then ever, the MPAA and their ilk are crying about how they aren’t making as much money due to piracy. I suggest that the real pirates here are the theater owners, who are raising ticket prices at the highest year to year rate ever. → Read More
More fallout from last week’s U.S. Government Accountability Office report on the entertainment industry’s piracy numbers. The gist of the report was that the government (and you and I) should never believe what the entertainment industry has to say again re: piracy because it was pulling data completely out of thin air. “Oh, 44 percent of all unauthorized file-sharing comes from universities… → Read More
There really isn’t any particular point to the following story other than to get you riled up as your begin your weekend. The U.S. government is actively trying to figure out how best to handle intellectual property rights, so it has asked the concerned parties to submit all sorts of information in order to better understand what’s going no. The person in charge of this is the Intellectual… → Read More
It’s getting harder and harder to be surprised about the MPAA‘s silly tactics. So, surprise! The MPAA has successfully shut down an Ohio town’s municipal Wi-Fi network because one person was caught illegally downloading a movie. You know, peers and seeders and all that. → Read More
You probably already hate, for whatever reason, the MPAA (and its music industry cousin, the RIAA), but here’s another reason to do so. The group is asking, for like the zillionth time, for the FCC to approve something called selectable output control. In essence, this allows a video signal to be sent to your TV from, say, a video on-demand service, that prevents the use of certain, non-aproved… → Read More
You wouldn’t want to be isoHunt founder Gary Fung these days. He’s currently facing an MPAA lawsuit that could well result in fines in the millions of dollars. (TorrentSpy was ordered to cough up $100 million last year.) And even if Mr. Fung doesn’t have that kind of money, and he doesn’t, the MPAA is prepared to pursue any judgment “for the rest of his life.” The MPAA sounds like it means… → Read More
What’s another phrase for, “meh, who cares?” That’s what I’m thinking when I read that the MPAA tried to argue in court that making a personal copy of a DVD is illegal under the DMCA. Is it shocking to people that the MPAA would argue in favor of its own interests, possibly at the expense of the your ability to make rip a DVD? No. No it’s not. → Read More
Remember RealDVD, Real Networks’ attempt to legitimize DVD copying, only the movie studios freaked out because they didn’t understand what the software was all about? Well, Real still thinks it has a good chance of winning the lawsuit it faces. Lawsuit out of the way, it’ll go on selling RealDVD like nothing ever happened. → Read More
How much does it cost to monitor college students’ anti-American P2P activities? A whole lot, and that’s money colleges could be spending on, I don’t know, education. This chart breaks down the cost of complying with, specifically, the new provisions of the Higher Education Act of 2008. That law, which the RIAA and MPAA were able to lobby their way into, requires colleges try to… → Read More
Like Achilles, it looks like RealDVD has lived a short but glorious life. Its name will echo for eternity. And so on, and so forth. Right, so that judge that RealNetworks was so confident would rule in its favor did the exact opposite, ruling in favor of the movie studios. The temporary injunction on the sales of RealDVD will go on indefinitely; the odds of RealDVD coming back, especially before… → Read More
The RealDVD saga continues, quickly becoming one of the more interesting tech stories of the past few months. As we already know, both RealNetworks and the MPAA have been suing each other left, right and center over the past two weeks. Well now Real has issued an official statement, one sure to send shivers up the spines of the MPAA’s lawyers. We are confident that the Court will determine… → Read More
Note that I have nothing against Mr. Norris per se. You just knew this was going to happen. Sales of RealNetworks’ RealDVD have been suspended while Real fights Hollywood in court, forever. You already know what Hollywood’s beef is, that RealDVD allows people to illegally copy DVDs blah bah who cares. Rent, rip and retun all you want, I say. Take this line from the MPAA’s… → Read More
In yet another ridiculous and short-sighted move, “the nation’s top movie companies” have filed suit against RealNetworks due to the release of RealDVD. Oh my god. Every time I think these heads of industry can’t get any more stupid, they do something like this. What are they going to accomplish here? They’re telling consumers that they can’t back up their own… → Read More
Joe Biden, Barack Obama’s running mate, is not your friend when it comes to technology. Well, he could well be your friend, if you’re the RIAA or MPAA. The vice presidential nominee has sponsored bills over the year that were championed by both the music and movie industry. He was one of the main forces behind the Perform Act, which is what the RIAA used to sue XM Satellite Radio for… → Read More
If the MPAA had its way, your DVR would be nothing more than a hunk of useless metal and plastic, unable to record and pause live television. Steps are being taken to ensure that it gets its way. The fun-loving association is pushing hard for a technology called selectable output control, or SOC, which allows content providers—movie studios and the like—to prevent material from being… → Read More
More often than not, it’s the simple explanation that makes the most sense. Commenting on a recent LA Times woe-for-the-movie-industry piece, Techdirt arrives at the stunning conclusion that people will pay to go see a good movie. The LA Times article describes in detail the efforts that the industry took to delay The Dark Knight including shipping the movie reels in separate shipments to… → Read More
This may come as a bit of a shock to y’all, but the MPAA actually has a idea to “save” the movie industry that doesn’t involve sending out John Doe letters to dumb teens. The association is launching a Web site (no release date yet, ‘fraid) that will help folks find legitimate sources of movies. You know, iTunes, Xbox Marketplace, Netflix, etc. It’s 2008. Good to see… → Read More
The MPAA may have some explaining to do following remarks of one of its lawyers in the Jammie Thomas trial. The remark in question, as written by Marie. L. van Uitert: It is often very difficult, and in some cases, impossible, to provide such direct proof when confronting modern forms of copyright infringement, whether over P2P networks or otherwise; understandably, copyright infringers typically… → Read More
Sad news, folks. Manny, a dog trained to sniff out pirated DVDs, has died in Malaysia. The AP is reporting that the dog “died of an unknown cause” and that Malaysian authorities don’t suspect foul play, but then added that two other dogs that helped uncover 1.6 million pirated DVDs last year “reportedly caused movie pirates to place a bounty on their heads.” I’m no cop but there’s… → Read More
The Motion Picture Association of America wants to release movies to TV, pay-per-view, on-demand, and premium movie channels before releasing them for sale on DVD. Sounds good, no? There’s a little catch, though. The MPAA wants to block these early releases from being recorded on your DVR. Traditionally, new movies get released into theaters, then get shown on airplanes and in hotels, then are… → Read More
I knew that printers could copy documents but can they really copy Iron Man? Researchers at the University of Washington were doing some tests to suss out BitTorrent traffic on their local network when they found a way to spoof traffic from certain IP addresses. After spoofing two printers on their network, the printers received DMCA notices from the MPAA for sharing files like Iron Man and the… → Read More
Go ahead and tell me that New York isn’t over. The city will be plastering subways with anti-piracy flyers throughout the summer, telling people, essentially, not to copy that floppy. Harried New Yorkers and in-the-way tourists will be treated to mock movie ratings, like the kind seen here. Instead of “R” and “PG” we’ll be seeing “RO” and… → Read More
Usenet appears to be the MPAA’s next target. Not good. The MPAA has told Newzbin, a popular Usenet indexing service and creator of the NZB file format, that it’s hosting copyright-infringing material, material that needs to be removed post-haste. Never mind that NZB files themselves aren’t copyright-infringing (though I doubt the courts would make that distinction), but such is… → Read More
Flickr’d You guys watch Revision 3, right? Diggnation, Tekzilla (my personal favorite), Totally Rad, etc. The company was DoS’d last week, and you’ll never guess who was responsible. Can you say MediaDefender, the same company the RIAA and MPAA employs to shut down illegal BitTorrent trackers? According to Rev3′s CEO Jim Louderback, the anti-BitTorrent company had been… → Read More
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) wants $15.4 million from The Pirate Bay for copyright infringement. It cited that “The Pink Panther” torrent file has been downloaded from The Pirate Bay almost 50,000 times. The Pink Panther — starring Steve Martin? I think 50,000 downloads would eclipse the number of people who saw it in the theater. Plus, it’s just the… → Read More
In what can only be termed a crushing defeat, leading torrent site TorrentSpy has been ordered to pay more than $110 million to the MPAA by a US District judge. It’s been a losing battle following TorrentSpy’s decision in March to make a stand by erasing a huge amount of MPAA-requested data they considered private. This isn’t the time for sites like TorrentSpy to win cases like… → Read More
In 2005, the Motion Picture Association of America did a study where it claimed to find that college students account for 44% of the losses that the movie industry incurs, thanks to the illegal downloading of pirated films over high-speed campus networks. That figure is more like 15% due to a “human error,” according to the MPAA. That’s a pretty big difference. What’s more… → Read More
Use BitTorrent to, cough, illegally download music, movies, games and whatnot? If you do, you might want to watch this video, which explains how tracking agencies (the companies the **AA hire to track your downloads, often leading to a letter from your ISP saying you’ve been caught) do what they do. It’s fairly informative and will tide you over until the MacWorld three ring circus… → Read More
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