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Because Netflix is a home-viewing platform, critics like Spielberg say that it's better-suited for the Emmys, which celebrate TV, a medium inherent to home-viewing.

Theater ticket sales in 2017 were $11.1 billion for the U.S. + Canada, $40.6 billion worldwide.

2017 sales of the same movies on disc and digital format were $20.5 billion for the U.S., $47.8 billion worldwide. Compounding this is the fact that disc and digital movies are cheaper per viewer. So each dollar spent on disc and digital formats represents more viewers than a dollar spent at the theater.

People view theatrical release movies predominantly in the home, not in theaters. It's been this way since the 1980s when movie rentals on videotape became a thing. If you honestly make "viewed in theaters" vs "viewed at home" the distinguishing factor, then no film (except those intentionally withheld from disc and digital distribution) qualifies for the Oscars.

I see we will never agree on this point of the conversation, so I won't respond further.

Oh, wow. Then what is het waddle in the rest of your post? Something to accept without response? You just told yourself a lie. (Saying I am not going to respond further and then you respond). Supposedly I am no longer to do so. Obscene principals at work here. Do you expect me to be impressed by your holiness? You are just dishonest. Your morals are a clear fail.

Can you honestly not see that my comment only applied to one point of the conversation (eg. whether the original group gets to define the term it uses for itself) and not to the whole conversation?

Your statements about trademarks is reasonably accurate this time. Except the fair use bit. The church can call itself Mormon but so can anyone else and the church cannot sue for it. It is not a trademark.

I quoted a swath from the Church's own statement on trademark and servicemarks. Intellectual Reserves, Inc (IRI), does have a trademark on the term Mormon and has filed lawsuits to enforce the trademark. One such lawsuit was against "Mormon Match" (a dating service) in 2013. Can the Church of Latter-Day Saints Trademark the Word 'Mormon'?

"Fuck" gets you an 'R' rating in a movie? That alone? I doubt you can find anyone in the civilised world who believes or accepts that. In Iran, or parts of Asia maybe. Cite me the regulations where that is true because I believe you are just lying again. If it is the case in all or parts of the USA then you should be thoroughly ashamed.

Please read the Ratings Rules of the MPAA. It used to be (eg. 1990s or earlier) that a single F-bomb was all it took for a movie to carry an R rating. Currently, a single F-bomb could be PG-13 depending on other criteria, but 2 F-bombs force an R-rating or NC-17.

And liars are not part of polite society. They do not understand what it means. You fail to see that you can never, ever be part of polite society as long as you are peddling lies.

But I don't peddle in lies. One question on the temple recommend interview is of I'm honest in all my dealings.

Just like Hubbard FWTIW. You show an excellent example when you say you will not respond because we will never agree.

When neither side is likely to change their viewpoint, what's the point in repeating the same arguments ad nauseum? Rather than waste each other's time on that one point, let's agree to disagree.

I wouldn't say never, but not until your morals improve and you raise you are no more special (or right) than anyone else. There is a reason why you "don't discuss politics or religion at the dinner table", as no cilvil discourse or polite society can arise. Either or both sides will be lying through their teeth.

You don't discuss religion in polite society because a certain amount of faith is required. There is no repeatable empirical evidence to scientifically prove who is correct.

Why do you think that you can set the limits of 'polite society'? Research has shown that people who use profanity tend to be more honest than those that don't. I am not going to cite because it was all over the news just recently. You might also note that I don' use profanity all that much, just to reinforce things (and partly, I admit, to see how you would react. You reacted by focussing on the words not their meaning. You are just not self-honest and cannot be honest to others. The only reason that profanity can impair a situation is when one side won't listen to it (and then dismiss the argument).

I addressed all your initial points and included an aside on your potty mouth; you turne

OK, I got curious and tracked down some source. Warning PDF and the source is the MPAA, although I don't know why they would want to bias that particular stat, they *are* the MPAA so who knows? Anyway, their data show 18-24 and 25-39 as consistently the two largest age ranges. The wrinkle in this is that 9-18 is having their parents buy the tickets, especially the lower end of that range so I'm not sure how they actually measure this.

I can't find a better source, or any explanation of their methodology that might explain how a movie put a butt in a seat because an adult wanted to see it, or because they had to accompany their offspring or little sibling.

I don't know if the number of R rated films has dropped off, but let's say that it has. Maybe it's got more to do with ubiquitous Internet porn than age catering. Why pay $12 to see 10 seconds of boobies when you can fap your eyes out online for nothing?

That's not really true in this case. The music industry's U.S. revenue was $7 billion in 2015. The TV and movie industry's revenue was $131 billion in 2014 So about $140 billion total.

U.S. ISP revenue was $97 billion in 2016. The U.S. consumer electronics industry revenue is over $200 billion. The Internet publishing, broadcasting, and search industry's revenue was about $110 billion in 2014. Total is over $400 billion. Nearly 3x bigger than music, movies, and TV. Yet they're made to bend over and comply with the wishes of the studios. The tail is literally wagging the dog.

It already destroyed Sony's audio electronics division. Sony was the top name in audio equipment in the 1970s and 1980s. Then in 1987 they acquired CBS records and renamed it Sony Music Entertainment. SME coexisted with Sony Electronics until 1998, when the MP3 player came to market. Sony Electronics came up with an MP3 player, but SME forced them to add DRM to it. Customers avoided it because it was impossible to take their existing CDs and simply copy the music over to a Sony MP3 player.

Sony's 1998 revenue was 1,128 billion Yen for the audio division (page 14), 660 billion Yen for the music division (page 15).

Their 2000 revenue was 935 billion Yen for the audio division (page 47), 709 billion Yen for the music division (page 498).

By 2003 their audio sales had atrophied to 683 billion Yen (page 20), vs 636 billion Yen in music sales (page 18). Music sales were about the same as 1998, but their audio electronics sales had been cut nearly in half because of SME demanding their products comply with their copyright protection requirements. (In 2004 their music division began a joint venture with BMG, so financials are not comparable from then on.)

https://www.riaa.com/
http://www.mpaa.org/
http://www.foxnews.com/

I did gloss it over in my write up though I did not forget it. I somewhat addressed that in my closing question. To expand, I think that there are some people who just enjoy going to the movies. For whatever reason, for them, all the risks of the annoying behaviour that you describe together with the cost are shadowed by the pleasure of their experience. Maybe it is just about doing something out in public, or whatever. I dunno. If we assume this, then it is possible that the pre-release leak of the movie would incline their choice of movie (given that they've *already* decided to go to the theater) towards a new release that just became available in pirated form.

I personally find $25 to see a movie with my wife a bit hard to swallow and tend to only go on somebody else's suggest (to be social), but some people really enjoy the theater experience and would pay regardless of whether the film is available in pirated form or not.

My suspicion is that file sharing would only affect the segment of people who value being up on the latest movies but don't value the theatre experience.

As an aside, the report at http://www.mpaa.org/wp-content... provides some interesting statistics about ticket sale volume (in summary, "2012 U.S./Canada box office was $10.8 billion, up 6% compared to $10.2 billion in 2011, and up 12% from five
years ago.", "The 2012 increase in U.S./Canada box office was due to an equivalent increase in admissions (6%) compared to
2011, as admissions reached 1.36 billion,", "More than two-thirds of the U.S./Canada population (68%) – or 225 million people – went to the movies at least
once in 2012, consistent with prior years."

If you assume piracy has been increasing over the last few years then the stats that MPAA is releasing don't really seem to lead to the conclusion that it is affecting ticket sales in a negative fashion.

So, based on what you've said, translations shouldn't be allowed before the film has been released? Okay, I may disagree with it (I think you've entirely ignored legitimate uses that precede a public release while glossing over the fact that public releases oftentimes happen during the theatrical release these days; Amazon Instant Streaming has a number of titles that are currently in theater, for instance), but I can at least see the logic behind it. What about the other 98.6% of films though?* What legitimate reason is there for outlawing translations of them?

A translation of a book replaces the need for a copy of the original, but not so with translations of films, since you still need a copy of the original film, and if someone wants to pirate that copy, that's already a crime. Taking down a site that publishes translations is as silly as taking down a publisher that prints study guides for books: the derivative work cannot exist independently of the original, and in no way facilitates piracy. I actually think I used this particular site a few months back when I was ripping my entire library of blu-rays and DVDs so that I could watch them from my Apple TV and ran into a few discs that had subtitle formats my ripper couldn't recognize or my encoder couldn't use.

* I didn't just pull 98.6% out of my ass. See this 2010 estimation that there were approximately 172,000 total films, then add about another 15,000 to account for the three years since then (which is a conservative estimation, considering the MPAA's reported numbers (see the bottom of page 20) for the last few years have skyrocketed, and we can likely expect that to be true elsewhere as well). If we then assume a rather generous-for-your-side delay of 6 months on average between a movie's theatrical and public releases, we can say that there are about 2500 films at any given time that have not yet been released, which means that about 98.6% have already been released.

3D is doing better at the movies, but fewer people are going to the movies (compensated by higher prices), and the movie version seems to work better.

Actually, the news for 2012 was that box office and admissions (the former measures revenue and the latter is bodies), was down. That turned out to be totally false when the numbers finally came in.

Some interesting facts gleaned from here: http://www.mpaa.org/Resources/3037b7a4-58a2-4109-8012-58fca3abdf1b.pdf

Both Revenue and Admissions were UP over the prior year. Up by 6% in the US/Canada whether measured in dollars or head-counts. (page 9).
Some of this is due to the fact that the recession was really biting in 2011, which reduced head-count. But Revenue never took a backward slide.
This trend holds true for worldwide revenue and head counts as well.

However, 3D Box Office revenue is off significantly in 2012. From a high of 2.2 billion down to 1.8. The bloom is off the rose.

Ticket prices have not kept up with the rate of inflation in the last two years, although the industry was raising prices during the height of the depression. (?!).
A movie ticket costs on average 80 cents more than id did 4 years ago.

Still, in the US and Canada, Non-moviegoers account for 32% of the population in the age group that attends movies.

And oddly, the movie business is doing better since they started exploiting the net. I mean the Theater Business. Its still growing, in spite of the trash the shovel out these days.

It has actually increased, last year up by 6%, the year before up by 12%.

If movies on line were priced lower than they are their receipts would be up even more. The average CURRENT movie prices in Google Play Movies runs around $5-7 bucks for HD quality for one play. To own it, costs usually around $12 to $18.

Both the per-view and the Buy to Own are enough to keep me from buying or renting most of the drivel they shovel out these days. I might buy a view at $2.00, I might buy to own at $6.00.

http://mikerogers.house.gov/legislation/sponsoredbills.htm

The only thing this guy has sponsored and has become law are re authorization of the Patriot Act and two Funding actions for National Intelligence.

1. H.R.67 : To extend expiring provisions of the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 and Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 until February 29, 2012.
Sponsor: Rep Rogers, Mike J. [MI-8] (introduced 1/5/2011) Cosponsors (None)
Committees: House Judiciary; House Intelligence (Permanent Select)
Latest Major Action: 1/24/2011 Referred to House subcommittee. Status: Referred to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security.
Note: For further action, see H.R.514 , which became Public Law 112-3 on 2/25/2011.

3. H.R.754 : Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011
Sponsor: Rep Rogers, Mike J. [MI-8] (introduced 2/17/2011) Cosponsors (None)
Committees: House Intelligence (Permanent Select)
House Reports: 112-72
Latest Major Action: Became Public Law No: 112-18 [GPO: Text, PDF]

7. H.R.1892 : Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012
Sponsor: Rep Rogers, Mike J. [MI-8] (introduced 5/13/2011) Cosponsors (None)
Committees: House Intelligence (Permanent Select)
House Reports: 112-197
Latest Major Action: Became Public Law No: 112-87 [GPO: Text, PDF]

This guy is in bed with the NSA and the CIA, that's where the legislation came from. He thinks that spying on Americans is the best way to protect us from all those folks in the Middle East and China. I think he's a cross between J. Edgar Hoover and Jack Valenti. Also don't forget who's in charge of the MPAA now, good old Chris Dodd. The stench is all around on this one folks.

Brigner is in favor of SOPA/PIPA and screwing with DNS.
http://www.shinkuro.com/PROTECT%20IP%20Technical%20Whitepaper%20Final.pdf
http://blog.mpaa.org/BlogOS/author/Paul-Brigner.aspx
So, yeah.

and compare it to $58B, which is over an unspecified time period.

A quick Google brings up a PDF from the MPAA site claiming that "$58 billion in economic output is lost to the U.S. economy annually". If the guy's research is as thorough as he implies in the summary then it probably was explicitly mentioned in the video.

I have a lot of problems with Dodd's cozy relationship with the financial industry (probably what's driving him out of the Senate)

Driving him out of the Senate? He's already out of the Senate. He is now the Chairman and CEO of the MPAA. Hence, his statement is from the MPAA to his former colleagues in the Senate saying that the MPAA gave them money so they better pass the legislation the MPAA demands. Somehow, the fact that Dodd is now the head of the MPAA is often left out of the reporting (even left out of the petition). Does that make the sleaziness a little clearer?

I see a lot of venting and ranting, but not a lot of info about what actually has or has not happened. No one seems to have noticed some of these Web sites are up and running.

copyright.gov is up
DOJ is up
RIAA seems to be down
MPAA is up
UMG is down
BMI is down

OK, now that we've got those facts sorted out, the next question is who cares?

This isn't like a DDOS attack against Amazon or Google. None of these organizations, government or otherwise, depend on their Web sites to transact business. Copyright.gov is an informational resource that contains reference material you can find in many other places. No one cares if it's down. Did you even know it existed before it allegedly went down? Justice.gov exists to inform the people about what the department is doing. That's it. If Anonymous wants to raise awareness about the DOJ's activities, taking their site down has the opposite effect, and does not hurt the DOJ. When was the last time you visited the MPAA or RIAA site? Is that where you're going to look to decide what movie you want to see tomorrow, or what music you're going to buy on iTunes? And UMG and BMI's businesses don't depend on their Web sites... their music is marketed and sold elsewhere.

We've known for about 12 years now that it's really not that hard in the scheme of things to DDOS even the biggest sites on the Web. Remember the shocking 3-hour attack on Yahoo in Feb 2000? The prevailing thought then was, "If they can shut down Yahoo, they can shut down anybody." This was a legitimate concern because with its site down, Yahoo's business does not exist. But these attacks are being directed at sites where it really doesn't matter. All it does it generate a scary-sounding news headline. Some of Anonymous's other antics have some real world implications for their targets... this does not.

I don't think they are authorized to rent DVDs. Why do you say they are? See the MPAA document: http://www.mpaa.org/Resources/2146a1b0-20bd-48ce-a473-f5f27812ba29.pdf It makes sense that they're not authorized - how else can they rent for $1.99? Never get that from Blockbuster. Blockbuster has a special deal with the studios as I understand it. They pay way more for the same movie disc that we can buy from Walmart for $15.

True, you make a lot of good points so I decided to look into it further. I decided to look into a high end brand of clothing (i.e. non-commodity) and the first company that popped into my head was Gucci.

2010 fiscal year reported revenues:

• Gucci: € 4,010.7 million / $ 5,800.42 million (source)
• Apple: $ 65.22 billion (source)
• RIAA (US market): $ 6,850.1 million (source)
• MPAA: US $ 10.6 / Worldwide $ 31.8 billion (source)

Even then, a single high end clothing brand can almost match RIAA's earnings.

Sony is part of RIAA and MPAA, you stupid git.

http://www.riaa.com/aboutus.php?content_selector=aboutus_members&f=s
http://www.mpaa.org/faq

Apparently the RIAA is upset that we aren't using the far more encompassing MPAA piracy list instead.

http://www.mpaa.org/Resources/fdff7027-1a9e-46dc-9a80-7cf20aa1b686.pdf

Yes, it's real, and right off of the MPAA site, lol! Skip to page 3 for the list. There's honestly some stuff in there I didn't know about, like kino.to

I suggest you toddle on over to http://mpaa.org/contentprotection/report-piracy and report the MPAA fucks for pirating our freedom of speech.

Seeing as the Slashdot editor/submitter were too lame to include links themselves, I'll give you all a hand at, um, investigating these fine websites.

Aiplex MPAA

I actually didn't think the Aiplex site was correct at first, just because of how awful it is. Maybe they got into the "anti-piracy" business because they failed so amazingly hard at website design.

Let's skip the web site design and just look at the content -- is this for real?

Aiplex has a blend of technology savvy & process driven dedicated team bringing about a paradigm shift in rendering customized solutions to its clients. We have steadily grown in reach and service offerings with a favorable cost-benefit ratio & keeping pace with the emerging business needs of our customers.

First - you're using "&" in the description of your business? Second, those sentences don't actually make sense...

Now let's look at the <title> element of the web page:

Medical transcription , Search engine optimization , AiPlex Software Pvt. Ltd. , MT & seo , Seo & mt , transcription services , medical transcription , medical transcription services , medical transcription work , medical transcription job , medical transcription company , medical transcription medical transcription karnataka , medical transcription india , medical transcription news , medical transcription offers , medical transcription company in bangalore , medical transcription company in india , medical , information , medical records , medical dictation , medical transcription night shift work , mt night shift job , mt work , mt jobs , mt careers , mt business , mt training , mt desk , mt daily , mt bangalore , mt india , mt 24*7 , mt company in banglaore , mt company in india , mt outsourcing , mt careers in bangalore , mt jobs in bangalore , mt hipaa regulations , mt hipaa compliance , out source medical transcription , aiplex , aiplex mt , aiplex mt bangalore , aiplex medical transcription , voice files , dictation , medical dictation , mt dictation , doctor voice files , patient record , patient charts , health care india , security in healthcare , security in medical dictation , Processing million lines a month , office based mt opportunities , home based mt work , home transcription , HT bangalore , aiplex home based benefits , mt career opportunities , aiplex guarantees 98.5 % accuracy , aiplex quality management system ensures customer expectations , toll free dictation , disaster recovery plan , attractive prize of 8cents per line of transcription , 360 degree machanism to deliver flawless transcripts , robust infrastructure for data back, data security & confidentiality , 12hrs turn around time ( TAT) , mt resume online , direct submission previlage at higher rates for HTs , enhanced benefits for enhanced targets , medical transcriptionist , proof reader , Quality analyst , Best MT company in bangalore.

Alas, though they boast "SEO" in their title among other things... a search for "medical transcription" on google doesn't turn them up (at least in the first page). The I'm not usually a fan of this kind of "justice", but in this case the web was a slightly better place for the duration of this site's outage.

On the other hand, if this is who the Bollywood (not the MPAA as TFS implies) employs to do their dirty work, then the only real concern is that torrenters will fall off of their chairs laughing. In the process they might collectively hit their heads on their power strips and take their dirty file-sharing systems offline.

On the third hand, looking back through the press coverage of Aiplex, I notice that the *only* person who claims that Aiplex is working with Bollywood is the owner of Aiplex. This hints to me that their rather successful attempt to bltiz the media with their name has backfired in the most extravagantly perfect way possible.

while [[ 1 ]]; do curl http://www.mpaa.org/ >/dev/null; done

http://www.aiplex.com/registration.html
http://www.mpaa.org/search/policy

are up now. and fast for me in BC. cloud scaling? It may be that they are paying to keep the sites up with extra bandwidth. This actually would impact their bottom line instead of just being a nuisance the way normal DDOS (take down) would be.

I notice that the MPAA site has a "Report Piracy" form at http://www.mpaa.org/contentprotection/report-piracy.

As a member of the society that has granted copyright holders their limited, temporarily monopolistic usage rights, I am at this moment reporting the misappropriation of the terms "theft", "ownership" and "property" with respect to these rights and the content they cover. (They are violations because copyright is a social contract between creators of intellectual property and society, and any contract has two sides. The MPAA et al are violating their side of the contract.) I discovered these violations on their very website! Anyone else want to complain?

MPAA.org and aiplex.com both seem to be working at the moment.

Seeing as the Slashdot editor/submitter were too lame to include links themselves, I'll give you all a hand at, um, investigating these fine websites.

Aiplex
MPAA

I actually didn't think the Aiplex site was correct at first, just because of how awful it is. Maybe they got into the "anti-piracy" business because they failed so amazingly hard at website design.

The Slashdot effect will have to do for now.

+1

If it were possible to download movies without DRM junk, I would pay close to the same cost as buying a physical DVD. (I just copy by dvd's to my computer for my media center anyways. I can't remember the last time I actually watched anything straight from a DVD.)

Most of the "sites" suggested by the MPAA don't exist anymore and all require windows
http://www.mpaa.org/piracy_internet.asp

I don't buy or play games based on their ESRB rating. I do not judge games or content for my children based on the ohsosubjective ratings process. These guys provide no value-add, just seems to be a money catch.

Oh, MPAA, you can lose your ratings as well ... I'm an adult, a participating parent, and I prefer to allow my children to experience and ask questions rather than become numb little fat kids with Nicktoons as a babysitter and therefore do not need your assistance in choosing appropriate content for my children.

We're talking about companies with hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue every year.

The media industry (at least the ones most concerned about TPB) are not that big. The companies overall are huge, but they do lots of other things that aren't related to media. Using their own statistics, global movie box office sales were less than $30 billion. DVD sales (which they apparently no longer release) were about twice that when I crunched the numbers a few years ago. So overall the global U.S.-based movie industry is less than $100 billion. The music industry is even smaller. About 1/3rd the size of the movie industry. Interestingly, their annual report with global sales figures is no longer available on the RIAA web site.

The industries taken as a whole don't even make it into the top-10 of Fortune 500 companies. They are small industries which wield an enormously disproportionate amount of power with our lawmakers. Their biggest claim to fame is not the content they produce, but that their products are "enablers" - driving demand for other industries like DVD players, MP3 players, TVs, etc. Those industries are many times larger, which kinda makes you think that the emphasis should be on allowing everyone to make as much content as they can, not on allowing a few companies to continue to control the content market.

http://www.mpaa.org/Ratings_HowRated.asp The major criteria is the content (i.e. language, nudity, etc) the minor criteria is the context. While cannibalism is a concept that is ill suited for 13 year olds, I do think that it could be presented in a way to get a lower rating while at the same time (with Anthony Hopkins' portrayal) being disturbing and creepy even to the level it is in the films. Hence the difficulty many parents have with the MPAA ratings. The ratings tell me generally how much mature or violent content is in the film but not whether the issues involving the plot are appropriate for my child or even palatable to me as an adult.

We all know PG-13 is box office gold compared to an R rating for movies like this. But what exactly is an "R" rated superhero?

According to the MPAA, the superhero resides in a film that "contains some adult material. An R-rated motion picture may include adult themes, adult activity, hard language, intense or persistent violence, sexually-oriented nudity, drug abuse or other elements, so that parents are counseled to take this rating very seriously." http://www.mpaa.org/FlmRat_Ratings.asp (source)

As you see, it's not just language, it's HARD language which of course is unspecified. It's not just violence, but intense and persistent. Nor is it just nudity, i.e. "naked women", it's nudity presented in a sexually oriented nature, and it's not just using drugs, but abusing them.

And even after all that:
"Generally, it is not appropriate for parents to bring their young children with them to R-rated motion pictures," says the MPAA guidelines.

This is all entirely subjective and as a result most movies are not faithful to their source screenplay or origin book due to cuts and re-edits to satisfy the MPAA so the most revenue can be squeezed from the largest possible audience. What you end up seeing onscreen is the result of a board of 10-13 individuals, each working periodically, each with their own agendas under a chairperson who has unlimited power to select anyone they choose - the qualifications being no more or less than experience with parenthood as an adult member of the community. Film producers are also under no obligation to submit a film for rating, but the industry as a whole has learned an unrated film squashes advertising revenue, reduced media exposure and opens up the door to lawsuits and negative publicity from special interest groups. So they play the system, often re-submitting films over and over after copious edits to try to satisfy the MPAA for that "gold" PG-13 rating. Any industry member knows it's not about being faithful to their art, it's all about that rating and the resulting increased revenue.

And the MPAA site states, "No one in the movie industry has the authority or power to push the Board in any direction or otherwise influence it."

We all know that the public influences the MPAA, society influences it, and the constant pushing of the envelope by film producers clearly influences how ratings are classified and assigned to those who "volunteer" for the MPAA's stamp of approval. There is no alternative, so this is how the system works until the industry and society as a whole puts enough pressure on the MPAA to put their loose standards to the test.

Is this system as described above corrupt? You're damned right it is.

I am sure that if there would be copyrighted material on TPB, they also would gladly remove it. However they do not host the copyrighted material. They host torrents that point to files. There torrent files (download one and see what it contains) itself is not copyrighted.

It is as if I would have a link to copyrighted material on a site. That site has a copyright notice on their site. Now would /. be guilty of me posting it, or should I be guilty of posting that. And even if it was myself, would I be doing something illegal at all?

I know this is slightly off topic because it's about movies not music however I have to agree with this.

Before the MPAA changed their website their about page was all about fond memories of going to the cinema as a kid to watch the black & white movies and about how movies should be enjoyed with a audience.

Those days are over. This generation wants content when it suits them and doesn't want to go to a filthy room with over priced junk food. They want to watch the movies in their own home around their own schedule, where people aren't going to be talking in the movie or making noises munching on popcorn.

I did a quick check and saw this..
http://www.mpaa.org/AboutUsGlickman.asp

It's about the current CEO of the MPAA. Lots of talk about how he has helped feed the worlds poor and how he is a political scientist. What about you know.. the damn movies?! The very core of the association's being and not one mention of why he loves movies or any experience he has in the area.

In fact all the MPAA is (judging from the website) about copyright protection. This is a shame and they should really move on and consider why there is so much copyright infringement and how their association can provide the media for the generate of today, not the old fart generation of yesteryear.

This most likely won't happen because from my point of view everyone at the MPAA has been replaced with lawyers and political scientists who are completely out of touch with the audiences of today. They can't even comprehend the fact that they need to change.

Why should the population of the US prop up an industry which has had many many decades to compete on the world market.

I really don't know

I bet you didn't know that, ahem ..

"The worldwide motion picture industry, including foreign and domestic producers,
distributors, theaters, video stores and pay-per-view operators lose more than $18 billion
annually as a result of movie theft. More than $7 billion in losses are attributed to illegal
Internet distributions, while $11 billion is the result of illegal copying and bootlegging."

http://www.mpaa.org/press_releases/realdvd%20press%20release%209%2030%2008%20final.pdf

Despite the conspiracy theories you're likely to hear about this, the reason why the DMCA sailed through Congress is the same reason it'll sail through Canada's legislative process... media companies are responsible for a nice chunk of GNP (and whatever they call it in Canada)

That's not really true.

The value of RIAA members' shipments (not sales) in 2007 was $10.37 billion.
The value of MPAA members' U.S. domestic box office and home video sales in 2007 was $37.44 billion ($40.92 per person box office + $118.39 per person home video times 235 million adults).

U.S. GDP in 2007 was $13.6 trillion, so together the RIAA and MPAA comprise 0.35% of the U.S. economy. For comparison, the MP3 player market in the U.S. for 2007 was an estimated $5.4 billion. That's just MP3 players, never mind accessories, home audio systems, headphones, car stereos, etc.

If they were a Fortune 500 companies, the MPAA's movie-related sales would come in at #62, and the RIAA's members would come in at #256. They wield so much power because they make a disproportionately high amount of campaign donations.

You're right, but that hasn't stopped others (MPAA) from trying.

press release - "Since filing a criminal complaint in Sweden in November 2004, the film industry has worked vigorously with Swedish and U.S. government officials in Sweden to shut this illegal site down."

Just an addition to a file? That only serves the individual who chooses to use that hosts file. Do you propose to hijack everyone's host files? Since we're going to call it a tea party, why not just call them Tea Bagging Bastards?

Yes! We need this. And we should post all their email addresses. And we should email them. Perhaps I'll go to the trouble of finding all the email addresses, or better... US Mail addresses.

RIAA Board of Directors: http://www.riaa.com/aboutus.php?content_selector=who_we_are_board

Mitch Bainwol Recording Industry Association of America
Victoria Bassetti EMI Recorded Music
Jason Flom Virgin Records America
Bill Hearn EMI Christian Music Group
Deirdre McDonald SonyBMG
Joe Galante SonyBMG
Kevin Kelleher SonyBMG
Rob Stringer SonyBMG
Jeff Harleston Geffen Records
Steve Bartels Island Records
Lawrence Kenswil Universal Music Group
Mel Lewinter Universal Music Group
Zach Horowitz Universal Music Group
Craig Kallman The Atlantic Group
Tom Whalley Warner Bros Records
Michael Fleisher Warner Music Group
Kevin Liles Warner Music Group
Bob Cavallo Buena Vista Music
Glen Barros Concord Records
Mike Curb Curb Records
Michael Koch Koch Entertainment
Tom Silverman Tommy Boy Entertainment
Jose Behar Univision
Alan Meltzer Wind Up Records

MPAA Members: http://www.mpaa.org/AboutUsMembers.asp

Paramount Pictures Corporation;
Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.;
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation;
Universal City Studios LLLP;
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures; and
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

Considering that the "Entertainment Software Association" was listed as one plaintiff, it seems that this case was not levied in reality against the "buyers" but against the "sellers" of the software. Well, not actually even the sellers, but people associated with the selling and manufacture.

I am just a silly Slashie, but it seems to be like trying to sue the Motion Picture Association of America for when some kids sneak into cinema to watch an M rated movie if they are a few months shy of the age limit. Maybe sue Paramount because some teenage girls ducked in and saw Johnny Depp in Pirates III?

*slap forehead*

Obama's not taking money from PACs just individuals.
If that's corrupted, its too bad but at least it's a step in the right direction.

After looking into the text of the bill itself, I found this under the list of duties on the IP czar:
(8) adopt an official seal, which shall be judicially noticed; and

Maybe it should be this: http://www.riaa.com/images/ico_RIAA-over.gif
or this: http://www.mpaa.org/_images/logo_main_header-original.gif

Cheers
Ben

If the GPL'd code was not modified, the software would not have sent information about the universities network back to the MPAA.

Dan Glickman is that you trolling as an AC?

The ESRB with it's similarly structured rating system which is nearly analogous to the movie ratings (E - G, E10- PG, T - PG-13, M - R, AO - NC-17) down to the two-ratings-at-the top-that-mean-basically-the-same-thing has carried much of the stigma of the X/NC-17 rating onto the AO rating.

In many cases too I think both ratings bodies consider having the stigmatized higher ratings gives them more leverage to strong arm companies into toning down their content, so I don't think either ratings organization particularly minds the current ratings status.

One day, maybe in the not too distant future, there will be an article on /.

It will read like this:


Your Rights Online: MPAA admit that everything they have said for the last 5 years has been a practical joke
Posted by kdawson on Tuesday Cantrembember 75th @ 27:00
from the i-knew-it department
Anonymous Coward writes: The MPAA has finally admitted what a lot of people on Slashdot have suspected for a while. Everything they've done for the last 5 years was all part of a practical joke.

"The lawsuits, the absurd DRM, the crazy "the entire industry is going to collapse" rhetoric - we never believed any of this crap", said a spokesman. "What actually happened was someone suggested that perhaps we could somehow start announcing these ridiculous ideas, record the reaction then release it as a movie. Kind of like The Truman Show, only much much bigger." Has the MPAA finally gone too far? Will this lead to their ultimate collapse? Quiver with excitement. Tremble with fear. Eat peanuts with raisins.

One day, maybe in the not too distant future, there will be an article on /.

It will read like this:


Your Rights Online: MPAA admit that everything they have said for the last 5 years has been a practical joke
Posted by kdawson on Tuesday Cantrembember 75th @ 27:00
from the i-knew-it department
Anonymous Coward writes: The MPAA has finally admitted what a lot of people on Slashdot have suspected for a while. Everything they've done for the last 5 years was all part of a practical joke.

"The lawsuits, the absurd DRM, the crazy "the entire industry is going to collapse" rhetoric - we never believed any of this crap", said a spokesman. "What actually happened was someone suggested that perhaps we could somehow start announcing these ridiculous ideas, record the reaction then release it as a movie. Kind of like The Truman Show, only much much bigger." Has the MPAA finally gone too far? Will this lead to their ultimate collapse? Quiver with excitement. Tremble with fear. Eat peanuts with raisins.

>Imagine if a store took a similar tactic: Some people steal merchandise, and others
>simply choose to go to other stores. Rather than perhaps raise prices a bit to cover
>costs and work on advertising and loss prevention the owner says "Well because people
>aren't buying, I have to double prices."

What's that? Here in the US, that's a perfectly valid business model. Well, except that there are no other stores, and you should also sue the customers in hopes of raising more revenue.

Time and time again, the ESRB has proven it can not be trusted and is not a very valuable tool for parents.

We need all retailers to prevent sales of M rated video games to minors. We need the ratings board to watch more than 30 minutes of footage before deciding on a rating. In fact, they should have to play the game and watch significantly more footage. There needs to be more transparency of the rating system and how they come up with various ratings.