The MPAA scored a victory last night when millions of people tuned in to CBS’s 60 Minutes. The ‘investigative’ news magazine ran a propaganda piece on movie piracy yesterday, allowing the MPAA to insinuate once again that organized crime and BitTorrent go hand in hand.
In a piece today in The Times, Sony boss Michael Lynton yet again champions 3 strikes for alleged pirates and states that combating piracy could add millions to the economy. He also says that due to piracy, in 2008 Hollywood made the lowest number of movies in the last decade. So where did its record earnings go?
The MPAA is currently involved in legal battles against several BitTorrent sites. Last year Hollywood’s lobby organization booked a victory in court when they managed to shut TorrentSpy down, but despite these efforts the studio bosses are still not satisfied. Three of the MPAA’s anti-piracy leaders have now been fired.
For years RIAA and MPAA members have hired companies to attack popular BitTorrent swarms in an attempt to interfere with their downloads. According to a recently published paper by New York University researchers, these attacks are highly ineffective. At best, they slow downloads for a few minutes, something most users don’t even notice.
After a win against TorrentSpy the MPAA is determined to silence isoHunt and bankrupt its founder Gary Fung. MAFIAA lawyer Steven Fabrizio guarantees that if they win the case, the movie industry will relentlessly hunt down any damages owed to them for the rest of Fung’s life.
If it was up to the MPAA, every website with links to copyright infringing files would be banned from the Internet. Perhaps they should take a closer look at their own website first though, since it’s vulnerable to an XSS attack, making it possible to browse The Pirate Bay directly from the MPAA website.
As a government owned corporation the BBC has a duty to educate, and be evenhanded in its dealings with subjects. Yet in a recent segment on their long-running ‘Film’ program, currently hosted by Jonathon Ross, the BBC ran a biased segment straight from the MPAA. The BBC on the other hand, believes it was fair and balanced.
The MPAA isn’t known for wasting opportunities to obtain information about BitTorrent sites and their users. In 2005 the MPAA paid around $15,000 to a hacker who obtained emails from TorrentSpy and The Pirate Bay. The case was heard in court and won by the MPAA, but this decision will soon be appealed.
MPAA chairman Dan Glickman is currently searching for another job. The Clinton-era cabinet minister has been head of the MPAA for the last four and a half years, but will be replaced in 18 months time because of his lacking performance. By contrast, Glickman’s predecessor, Jack Valenti held the office for 38 years.
This week’s hot topic is the reported collaboration between the RIAA, MPAA and your ISP. The aim of the music and movie industries is to reduce and deter illicit file-sharing by sending out warnings to alleged infringers. The big questions is this: How would you react if you received one of these warnings?
This week several scary stories surfaced about how the MPAA and RIAA are negotiating with ISPs on how to deal with copyright infringers. Even though it was often presented as news, those who look deeper will realize that this is nothing new at all, just the same old threats dressed up in a new jacket.
