Glickman’s departure comes as many see current MPAA tactics starting to backfire. In the important teen and twenties demographics the MPAA’s messages are not getting through, and in many cases are driving resentment against them. The negative PR generated by The Pirate Bay case, initiated after intense pressure was put on the Swedish government by the MPAA (via the White House) has also worked against them, as have various pushes globally to get ISPs to agree to a 3-strikes (or ‘graduated response’) policy. Others claim that Glickman’s leadership has been lackluster, his public speaking gigs ‘bad’ and ‘boring’, and hint that the short contract extension is because of this.

Of course, there is also precedent for the head of the MPAA being let go after embarrassing or damaging public relations activities. Glickman’s predecessor, Valenti, retired not long after a showdown between the MPAA and studios over an MPAA screener ban in late 2003. In that case the MPAA backed down after a court injunction went against them, and before a massively damaging antitrust lawsuit could be brought.

In the last few years, the MPAA has become the source of much derision. In choosing a successor for Glickman, the selectors will have to look hard to find someone able to bring the industry into the 21st century (or even the latter half of the 20th) and recapture the trust and credibility of the general populace. Meanwhile, to Glickman, we utter the words made famous by MPAA member NBC, “You’re Fired!”

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

“Reports on the theft of the latest installment of Harry Potter underscores that robbery of intellectual property extends far beyond the movies, to music, publishing, computer software
and other creative outputs that are the foundation of our modern information economy.”

Glickman then goes on summing up the familiar made-up statistics we read in every MPAA press release. Nothing spectacular, just the regular anti-piracy propaganda piece.

They seem to care a lot about copyright, but we’ve shown that the MPAA is not that concerned with others’ copyrighted works at all. In fact, they have been caught “robbing intellectual property” several times.

Earlier this year we reported that the MPAA used “Forest Blog” software without authorization. It had been completely stripped of his name, and links back to his site, thereby violating the linkware license. The MPAA later said that they were only testing the software. Not that it makes any difference, but why should one (willingly) remove all credits to the developer if it’s only a test?

But the MPAA doesn’t only steal software, they also pirate films. For those who haven’t seen the great documentary “This Film Is Not Yet Rated“, the MPAA openly admitted that they made unauthorized copies themselves. Kirby Dick, the producer of the documentary found out that the film that he submitted for screening purposes was copied without his permission. Say what?

I guess there’s an inner pirate in all of us.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

BitTorrent inc. did change their search engine. They even improved the look and feel by covering it in a web2.0 sauce. But they are still not filtering out the pirated flicks. And that’s strange because in November Bram Cohen (BitTorrent founder) said:

“BitTorrent, Inc. discourages the use of its technology for distributing films without a license to do so. As such, we are pleased to work with the film industry to remove unauthorized content from BitTorrent.com’s search engine.”

The press release continued:

Cohen confirmed BitTorrent, Inc.’s commitment to removing links that direct users to copies of pirated content owned by MPAA companies from its search engine at BitTorrent.com. The announcement today is historic in that two major forces in the technology and film industries have agreed to work together and proactively identify ways to l and to promote constructive innovation in this area.

Bram Cohen (BitTorrent) and Dan Glickman (MPAA)

The MPAA was happy and said:

“We are glad that Bram Cohen and his company are working with us to limit access to infringing files on the BitTorrent.com website,” said Glickman. “They are leading the way for other companies by their example.”

However, it seems that nothing is removed from BitTorrent.com at all, or they do a very, very poor job. If you search for Universals latest blockbuster “inside man” the CAM rips will pop up. And if you try other piracy sensitive terms like “dvdrip“, and “dvdscr” you will see that there’s a lot of pirated content available. In fact, I believe that more that 90% of the users of BitTorrent.com uses it to search for pirated content.

So what’s going on here? Is BitTorrent just messing around with the MPAA? Why is the MPAA going after other torrent search engines and not after BitTorrent.com?

update April 5: in a follow-up on this post BitTorrent spokeswoman Lily Lin told TorrentFreak

To slyck she stated

“Any copyright holder that believes our search engine links to an unlicensed version of their work can notify us. “We have a procedure in place which complies with the DMCA, and we follow that to the letter. Since the launch of our search engine, we have responded to every single take-down request sent to us.”

So they are not “working with the MPAA to limit access to infringing files on the BitTorrent.com”, like the press release stated. It is in fact the exact same procedure as other torrent search engines like Isohunt and Torrentspy have. So it sounds like a double standard to sue torrentspy and Isohunt, but leave BitTorrent.com unharmed.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.