mpaa

RIAA, MPAA resume lobbying push to expand copyright law

It only took a few days after politicians returned from their summer holidays for Hollywood and the major record labels to resume their legislative push to rewrite and expand digital copyright law.

The Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America are lobbying for a pair of bills that enjoy bipartisan support. Both are designed to give the federal government more power to police copyright violations, and both are likely to run into opposition from political foes of the RIAA and MPAA.

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on the so-called Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act, … Read more

Spying as a business model. Will these guys get a clue already?

Wish I could read minds because I'd love to know what the representatives from Comcast and Verizon were thinking as they listened to lobbyists from the recording and film industries push them to snoop on their customers.

All in the pursuit of upholding the law, of course. (Naturally.)

"We need the help of ISPs. They have the technical ability to manage the flow over their pipes," Shira Perlmutter, a vice president for global legal policy at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, said earlier Monday at a technology conference sponsored by the Progress and Freedom Foundation. &… Read more

If the film industry dies from piracy, I'll laugh -- hard

Ars Technica has an interesting story up today detailing the Association Against Audiovisual Piracy's analysis of P2P traffic of illegal movie downloads in France between November 2007 and June 2008, which found that more people than ever are illegally downloading some of the top domestic and foreign films.

The organization found that 90 percent of all P2P downloads came from the most popular films in theaters and that a "daily average of 450,000 downloads (in December, it was 536,000 per day), and a monthly average of over 14 million downloads" was witnessed.

Allegedly stunned by the gall of all those awful pirates, the organization felt it was necessary to send one of its hacks out to make a statement detailing how appalled it was at the information it obtained. But no one saw this one coming.

"We are facing a major phenomenon that can endanger the film industry and audiovisual industries. We did not expect such figures," ALPA director Frederic Delacroix said in a statement to the AFP.

Wow. Hold your horses for a minute here. This piracy problem can "endanger the film industry?" This should probably be filed under the "dumbest things I've heard all month heading."

If piracy kills the film industry and suddenly theaters from across the globe are closing up shop, I'll be the first to laugh, and I'll bet I won't even be laughing the loudest.… Read more

Mixed reviews for illegal file-sharing on campus

Newly reauthorized legislation will ask U.S. universities to deter students from illegal file-sharing, a controversial provision that has drawn concern from educators and praise from copyright holders.

On Thursday, the House of Representatives and the Senate overwhelmingly voted to pass the Higher Education Act 2008 (H.R. 4137), a law first established in 1965 to govern the nation's universities. Despite its five-year reauthorization schedule, the law hadn't been reapproved by Congress for 10 years, or about the same time it's taken the Internet to pervade college campuses nationwide. President Bush is expected to sign the legislation … Read more

The Digital Home 26: Is Dark Knight better than Godfather?

This week's episode of the Digital Home podcast tackles whether The Godfather is better than Dark Knight and if innovation really is dead in gaming. After that, Don chats with Ubicom's VP of Marketing and wraps up the show with a big announcement! Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 26 … Read more

Click here for first-run movies, MPAA lawsuits

A week after the debut of The Dark Knight, Hollywood's big summer hit, the movie studios are taking aim at two small-potatoes Web sites that point people to pirated versions of first-run films such as the Batman thriller.

The Motion Picture Association of America on Tuesday said it has filed lawsuits against MovieRumor.com and Free Online Movie DataBase, or FOMDB, for violating studios' copyrights by providing links to pirated versions of their movies.

The suits, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, alleged that the sites are virtual clearinghouses for locating infringing copies of … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 775: EverCuil

On today's show, we learn how we, too, can purchase an extreme cooling machine, we test out the new Cuil search engine, which is apparently already doomed by its incomprehensible name and the unreasonable hatred of our chat room. Also, Steve Jobs calls to clear the air regarding his health (if you can call it clearing the air, that is), and I go on a rant that includes the term "earwax wiggle." Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 775

‘Hijacked’ SF passwords made public (Thanks Russ960!) http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10000342-83.html

Hammer drops at last: … Read more

Court records: MPAA sought info on PirateBay founders

TorrentSpy may be gone but its attorneys continue to allege in court that the motion picture industry engaged in a spying campaign against the company as well as others, including the Pirate Bay.

TorrentSpy, a BitTorrent search engine that was driven out of business last March as a result of fighting a copyright suit filed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), is seeking another chance to argue that the MPAA wronged the company when it purchased information obtained from a hacker who had pilfered company e-mail.

A federal judge threw out TorrentSpy's hacker complaint last August, saying … Read more

Movie industry taps FCC to change rules

The Motion Picture Association of America is looking to make a deal with the Federal Communications Commission to get the latest Hollywood movies on TV much sooner after their original release. But there's a catch.

In exchange for the faster release, the MPAA wants the FCC to change its rules to allow the industry to prevent these movies from being recorded on DVRs and viewed on some high-definition TVs.

The MPAA filed its petition last week. The FCC is currently asking for comments on the proposal, and it could make a decision on the petition later this summer.

Even … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 741: 3Gasm

All the iPhone and App Store news you can shake a stick at. Plus, RIM and Palm say they're thrilled about the new iPhone. Huh. Us, too! But it's a delayed, uh, 3Gasm, since the phone won't be coming out until July 11. In other news, Amazon broke itself, the MPAA wants to break your movie recording, and SanDisk kills the TakeTV and Fanfare less than a year after it was born. Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 741

Live blog: Steve Jobs at WWDC 2008 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9960064-37.html

What’s good for … Read more