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 your suspicion of foul play, officers. Apparently the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) owns a few of these dogs and lends them out to various governments to help crack down on piracy. Although the dogs “cannot distinguish between real and pirated DVDs,” they’re able to help officers find counterfeit discs hidden in areas suspected to contain such items. → 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 made available on DVD and over the Internet, then on-demand/pay per view, then premium movie channels like HBO, and finally to regular broadcast TV. The whole cycle typically takes about three years. Well, the industry now wants to get its movies onto people’s televisions a whole lot sooner, before the movies are released on DVD, even. The problem, however, is that the MPAA is asking that the FCC allow it to selectively block high-definition movies from being recorded on our DVR systems. This process is called Selectable Output Control, and is currently restricted by the FCC, and, according to Ars Technica, “The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) wants a waiver on that restriction in the case of high-definition movies broadcast prior to their release as DVDs.” → 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 “F” for “ripped off” and “f,” respectively. Keep in mind that this is more about on-the-street piracy than cruising The Pirate Bay for DVD rips of Cloverfield, which, I must say, was probably the worst movie I’ve ever seen. Meanwhile, the MPAA says nearly 23,000 people have lost their jobs because of piracy, which also caused a $903m loss last year. I… don’t believe that stat. That’s just me, though. → 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 the world we live in. By the looks of it, Newzbin seems to be complying with the MPAA’s demands. It made a statement saying it doesn’t “condone” the posting of copyright-infringing material, and has hinted that it will remove such material and ban offending accounts. A few months ago, the RIAA targeted a prominent Usenet provider, so going after enablers like Newzbin was the next logical step. My advice? Leech off Usenet while you stile can. via TorrentFreak → 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 sending more than 8,000 SYN packets a second to Rev3′s servers, leading to the outage. Meanwhile, MediaDefender said it was only sending one packet every three hours. That’s quite a difference. It gets better! It seems MediaDefender had been up to no good vis-à-vis Rev3 for some time now. First, they [ArtistDirect's CEO and a MediaDefender vice president; MediaDefender is a subsidiary of ArtistDirect] willingly admitted to abusing Revision3’s network, over a period of months, by injecting a broad array of torrents into our tracking server. They were able to do this because we configured the server to track hashes only – to improve performance and stability. That, in turn, opened up a back door which allowed their networking experts to exploit its capabilities for their own personal profit. Louderback goes on: Although I can only guess, here’s what I think really happened. Media Defender was abusing one of Revision3’s servers for their own purposes – quite without our approval. When we closed off their backdoor access, MediaDefender’s servers freaked out, and went into attack mode – much like how a petulant toddler will throw an epic tantrum if you take away an ill-gotten Oreo. This is the part when we all say “boo!” to MediaDefender, and wish Rev3 the best of luck in the future. Speaking of Diggnation, they’re filming a live episode of the show here in New York next week. It’s in Brooklyn (Stuido B on Banker Street), and I imagine lots of the NYC “tech community” will be there. → 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 torrent file. There’s no telling how many people actually got the movie fully downloaded. That’s not likely to stop the MPAA, though. The MPAA is asking for between $37 and $44 per download, per film and almost $70 per downloaded episode of the TV show Prison Break. The law firm representing the MPAA says that these sums are fair “because the distributed files didn’t include copy protection, and were made available before the release of a DVD or a legal download,” according to IDG News Service. That seems a bit steep to me. The lawsuit also calls for interest to accrue over time, which pretty much means that the MPAA doesn’t expect The Pirate Bay to be too willing to pay up anytime soon. via Feber.se → 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 this — that’s still a ways off. In the meantime, though, their best course of action is to do what TorrentSpy and the Pirate Bay have been doing, even if that means you get hammered with an unfathomably huge fee. For those about to pay, we salute you. → 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, that figure may actually be closer to 3%. → 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 begins in a couple of hours. I do use PeerGuardian (well, SafePeer, to be exact) when I use Azureus, mainly for the illusion that I’m being protected. Who knows if it actually does anything. Video: How People Are Tracked Using BitTorrent [TorrentFreak] → Read More
Say hello to the source of the MPAA’s next ulcer. It’s ZML.com, a site with similar ultra-simplicity and low, low pricing to former heavyweight music champ Allofmp3.com. The site offers movies in varying levels of quality, with the lower resolution movies starting at $1.99 and the highest resolution movies (DVD-quality) topping out at $4.99. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Use at your own risk because the legality of this service is similar to Allofmp3, which got shut down. Movies are preformatted for your iPod, PDA, and/or big screen but it’s a crap shoot as to whether or not the movie you want is available in a particular format. It’s not quite as evolved as Allofmp3.com’s on-the-fly file encoding…yet. We’ll be watching this one like a hawk. I can almost hear the faint shuffle of the assembling army of lawyers. It’s like AllOfMP3 for movies: hands-on with ZML’s DRM-free flicks [Ars Technica] → Read More
Are you an out-of-work hacker angry at the world/some guy from TorrentSpy who wouldn’t let you do some ridiculous ad thing? Want to make over $4,999? Then send the MPAA an email. They’ll pay you $5,000 for secret information about TorrentSpy (Hacker: “They use PHP and Apache.” Hollywood: “Is that special code for stealing movies?” Hacker: “Yes.”). You’ll become hated by everyone in the world ! Best of all, you’ll learn a valuable lesson: don’t trust the man. → Read More
Piracy kills kittens, you know Don’t ask, don’t tell. Oh, but if the RIAA catches you, your ass is grass. That’s essentially how New York University, known as NYU to the Haley Joel Osments and Spike Lees and John Biggses of the world, treats piracy on campus. (I’ll be a senior there this fall.) I logged into the school’s main portal today to determine whether or not my $73 zillion in loans had cleared—they have! Debt rules!—and found an interesting little note from one of the higher-ups here. “A Note On Illegal Downloading,” a title that just screams faux academics, basically tells new and returning students this: look, we know you download music and movies, just don’t get caught. Because, hey, if you do, you’re on your own. → Read More
I know this spread like wildfire last night, but it’s pretty funny. The MPAA hired a company, MediaDefender, to stop piracy. How did they do it? Through a fake video download site called MiiVi, a red hot download site full of red hot videos. The catch? It makes you download spyware that reports back on stolen video found on your computer. What a treat! How did the world find out about the ruse? The morons used their own name and address to register the domain. I’ve said it once and I’ve said it again — these ham-handed efforts are so disgustingly transparent and foolish that it reflects poorly on an industry that has, thus far, acted like a bucket of morons. I love me some movies and I buy me some movies on iTunes, but this is like watching Gargamel trying to squash the Smurfs and it just makes me want to download some red hot movies. MPAA’s Media Defender sets up ‘fake’ site to catch pirates [Blorge] The Pirate Bay Wants MediaDefender to Walk the Plank to Bankruptcy [TorrentFreak] → Read More
Up until about a month ago, if you got caught pirating some software, music, or video, you could just claim that your router was left unsecured and that anyone could have accessed it. This claim would cause the party trying to sue you to drop their case against you and you’d walk off a free man or woman. But now times have changed and these big-shot lawyers accusing you of piracy now know that your router isn’t an acceptable cause for pirating. → Read More
The nerds cried foul and Digg acquiesced. Digg’s founder—and deity to many—Kevin Rose just posted an explanation for all the shenanigans that happened yesterday regarding HD DVD encryption key stories being pulled. The short of it, Digg has a policy of removing stories from the front page that it deems could get it into legal trouble—porno, piracy, and here, encryption keys. But since so many users were virtual rioting, Rose caved in. Now digg the story. → Read More
You would think that with the MPAA suing people left and right for copyright infringement and with movies like Ghost Rider climbing to the Number 1 spot you’d think it’d have $50 to throw a blogger for his software. “Think again!” cries Patrick Robin, designer of the Forest Blog publishing platform. Robin recently discovered that the MPAA’s blog (currently down) is using his software without having paid the proper licensing fees – 10 British Pounds for a personal license, 25 Pounds for a commercial license. So has Robin gotten his money yet? Nope. The MPAA has yet to reply to a letter he wrote regarding the theft of his code. MPAA Steals Code, Violates Linkware License [Torrent Freak] → Read More
A charming little video by the Futuristic Sex Robotz who seem to be upset by some sort of “copy protection” on music. I suspect they’re just angry because they don’t have big record deals like Nelly Furtado and don’t get to be taken both from behind and the front by rapacious contacts. Next year, boys! via BoingBoing → Read More
