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MPAA Sues Scour: Will Google Be Next?
BoFiS writes: "Well it seems the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) was feeling left out of all the suing action going on between the RIAA and Napster because News.com reports that they have filed a suit against Scour for aiding in the transfer of illegal/bootleg copies of movies. The article also talks about the DivX format that many movies come in, but not much about the suit itself." Scour may raise privacy concerns, but isn't their service essentially content-agnostic?
Pretty bad news for Nasa ....
-- the most controversial site on the Web
I've read a deposition from this guy Valenti (head of MPAA) before, and he really seems to lack a fundamental understanding of the technological status quo. Not only is he basically clueless of what's going on online, save a vague premonition that it's illegal and that he should sue, but any, and I mean any (wo)man who has traversed their way as far up the corporate ladder as he has should be astute enough to realize that the last thing to do right now is to sue.
I mean, talk about bad timing! Napster would have to rank at or near the top of the list of most covered Internet stories ever. You don't think the press isn't going to see this as a Napster analogue and just gobble it up? If there's one thing that really cemented Napster's growth, it's the fourth estate. I doubt if they would have anywhere near 20,000,000 users if Shawn Fanning wasn't on Newsweek and every newspaper and pop-culture rag in the country wrote multiple Op-Ed and news pieces on it.
And now this flaming idiot Valenti decides to sue! I really, really do feel for Scour - not because they're being sued. Ho no - I just hope that they have the bandwidth and servers to accomodate the five to ten extra million people that are going to sign on once the word "Scour" gets drag through the press just like "Napster" did a few months ago.
On one level Valenti is doing the right thing, I suppose. But come on. How stupid can you get? I would have at least waited until the Napster issue became stale with the public before throwing essentially the same lawsuit on the table again. It doesn't take a genious to tell you that Napster has benefitted from the RIAA suit far, far more than it has suffered. Even if they end up losing, they've built a brand-name that no amount of advertising could have ever hoped to achieve.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
The fact that you can download the music from within the scour interface is irrelevant. Music files on the internet may be copyrighted by bg labels, or they may not be. The industry has a very large share of the copyrights out there, but that doesn't mean that they should be given control over ALL music distribution.
People are copying copyrighted music out there and I think that is unethical. However, I do not believe that going after the mode of transmission is justified. The cost, which will be squashing independently recorded music forever, is simply too great.
In short, don't be trapped by the industry's mind control attempts.
The article states that Scour willingly removes the links of any copyright owner who requests that such a link be removed to their material. Also, Scour has made a few movie trailer/promotion deals with studios on their web site. This same studios (such as Hollywood) are now plaintiffs in this lawsuit!
The studios were apparently thinking about working with Scour for content, but instead have slammed them with a lawsuit through the MPAA. This is the wrong move, following the lead of the RIAA and Napster - it's not the way to make money. The studios want money, and few people have the bandwidth to download such movies right now - so these studios aren't losing money. IMO, it's far better from a business-stance to make deals and do movie promotions with a company like Scour - that could actually lead to some revenue. These lawsuits just lose money for everyone in legal fees.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Heh, I don't think the reduction in the amount of business that he did was so much because of porn flicks being pirated, but because there is so goddamn much porn out there. I mean, people joke about how much porn is available, but I don't think that too many of us really think about the atrociously huge amount of porn that is available without ever leaving the house. And I'm not talking pirated porn clips, I'm talking the whole friggin bonanza of pornography out there, from still pics to clips to special interest crap to major events; on the Howard Stern Show yesterday, Howard was interviewing a dude who was going to webcast a contest where some women would attempt to out gangbang each other. To win, they had to bang more guys than any other girl in 12 hours AND had to do more than 620 guys, which was the record done by some other chick, also on the Internet. Prize for the winner? One million fucking dollars!
Internet porn is absolutely huge, there is amazingly massive quantities of it out there and you don't have to leave your house to get more porn than you'll ever be able to spank to for the rest of your life. That dude wasn't driven out of business by piracy, he was driven out by lack of interest. Who the hell is going to buy a ticket to a porn theater and get horned up when they can spend the ticket price on a subscription to a site that tailors to their specific kink and get truckloads of porn for the price of a movie. Shit, take every single pirated movie and clip off of the Internet and the guy still would have gone out of business, because there is just so goddamned much porn available that is legit.
The supply far, far, far outweighs the demand, and that dude didn't get it until it was too late; so goes business in an industry affected by changing technologies, which, to swing bizarrely back on to topic somewhat, is the same lesson that the MPAA, RIAA and every other acronym that bases their existance on physical media is having crammed violently up their asses. This doesn't make piracy right, and violators should be subject to prosecution, but lawsuits such as the MPAA vs Scour and RIAA vs Napster are a complete waste of these groups' time, as they are pissing away every dime that they spend on these stupid lawsuits rather than developing a new business model to adapt to the sudden turns that technology has taken over the past few years.
Deo
Huh huh. Huh huh.
Huh huh. Huh huh.
Not surprisingly, the Proskauer firm, the same one in the 2600.com case is involved, as is Judge Kaplan's old firm, Paul, Weiss. I am personally disappointed that David Kendall of Williams & Connolly represents some of the Plaintiffs. Most may know him as one of Clinton's lawyers, but I know him (personally) as a longtime and good advocate of First Amendment rights.
Odd that you should mention that: landlords can get in trouble over their tenants' crimes.
There's a piece of legislation here in the UK (and not all the tea in Burnley would induce me to remember an actual citation) to the effect that any landlord who permits premises to be used for the purpose of the consumption of any of a short list of illegal substances is liable to some smallish penalty.
Given the current state of play in the War on Some Drugs, I would be very surprised to the point of actual amazement if there wasn't something comparable in every single US jurisdiction, Oz, Canada and indeed just about everywhere you can get away with refusing service to people lacking shirt or shoes.
Back to the subject under discussion: the logic is that where the landlord has control over his tenants' use of the premises (and most leases contain clauses that provide at least some restrictions on use) he is in a position to either throw the tenant out or at least inform on the druggies.
The logic of this action is that as Scour has at least some control (or the means to exercise control, whether or not they do exercise it) over what happens on their site, they can be held accountable for what they fail to prevent.
Your mileage may vary as to whether that's a good thing in these particular circumstances.
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
If this is really happening, I'm really sorry for your friend and all the other people in the world who derive their income from obselete froms of information distribution.
The world is changing. It is obvious that many people would rather get their porn/music/movies/whatever over the net than in physical form, many would argue that this is a long term trend. Of course there are IP issues to sort out in this new environment and they will get sorted out, one way or another, and we will move on.
Your basis for supporting the MPAA is about as solid as the tobacco companies crying, "but what about our employees?" as if keeping a few thousand people employed in a stangant industry was appropriate compensation for massive health care bills.
Disclaimer: I don't care what the tobacco companies do, but I don't want to pay for some one's self-inflicted degenerative disease.
Disclaimer: I hate all forms of IP and think the world would be a better place with no IP or significantly less. Given the mass of capital invested in IP these days I think it's unlikely I'll see its abolishment in my time, but I feel it's important to fight when IP rights are being extended & entrenched.
Who will they sue after all the people trying to develop person-to-person file sharing are out of business? Will HTTP servers become illegal? Will Gnutella and any other software that could be used for copying be restricted under the DCMA? Will they sue the Internet backbone providers for allowing copyrighted content to flow through their routers?
Well, that might be a bit extreme even for Hollywood. But the MPAA and RIAA's position seems to be that any software which allows arbitrary person-to-person file transfer is illegal. Or is it just indexing that makes such illegal?
It shouldn't need to be said, I find this attitude completely unacceptable. HTTP clients are not illegal merely because I can find illegal content on somebody else's HTTP server using a search engine. Napster and Scout are more streamlined, efficient, and convenient versions of the same thing; I simply don't see any fundamental or legal difference.
I think MPAA et al are making a big mistake. Rather than trying to eliminate file-sharing services, they should invest in building their own--- one with features they like. Instead, they may end up in a world where the services currently provided by Scour or Napster are done in a distributed fashion (or in an appropriate jurisdiction) and they have no influence.
When a service that's of value to the "average slashdot user" is endangered, we'll see like six articles with updates, and interviews with the agency trying to shut them down. But when the little guy is actually getting screwed when they really aren't doing anything wrong, it gets shrugged off because it doesn't affect you people.
Scour may or may not be operating in the legal limits of the laws, but one can certainly see how it's service is questionable. But the precent (not a legal precedent, it's never been to court) set by OLGA scares me. It really, really does.
OLGA used to hold about 33,000 files. Now it holds about 1,500.
-bugg
This is something I've wondered for a while about recording companies' wierd file-first-and-ask-questions-later policy:
my.mp3.com... At least they try to limit content access to at least those who have had a real physical duplicate of the album at some point.
But, yet, they get sued by record companies. The solid basis of the record companies case: The copies that the users are accessing are not copies of the cds they purchased, but of copies from another source. In other words, their case is based on a technicalty. But, likely a solid one.
Why, though? If record companies kill my.mp3.com and verifier-controlled services like it, then all the users will move over to unchecked storage sites like myplay.com and distributed file sharing systems like napster, gnutella, freenet, etc., all (or at least most if indexing is contributory infringement) of which are protected by the betamax ruling, because they have one or more significant legitimate uses. Are they really that short-sighted?
As much as I want large, firm rights and hard freedom on the net, and as much as I am disgusted by those big, solid corporate conglomerates, I am afraid I must side with the MPAA based on past experience. Let me probe deeper into the situation.
One of my friends was the head of a theater and movie rental store that specialized in adult entertainment and movies (don't make jokes, just read on). Unfortunately he recently had to pull out of the market after his sales had dropped significantly from since last year(the year broadband connections dramatically increased along the country).
Using common screen capture devices along with VCR's, (then later DVD's as the tech progressed), pirates began trading clips, then eventually full adult movies over usenet and irc and ftp, not to mention the new arrival of gnutella, freenet, and scour's client. Now, I'm not drawing size comparisions with Napster, but you must remember that it's not just size that matters, but how it's actually used. Many Napster users actually buy the CD's they pirate. But with the stigma attached to adult entertainment, such films get pirated big time anonymously as people would rather not be seen buying erotic films. My friend's theater dropped over the months in clients, and now about only 2-3 people per day come, as opposed to about 50 or so from last year. He asked a few of his few remaining regulars why sales were dropping so much, and the usual reply he got was, "It's easy to get porn for free anonymously on the net" When he was about to close down, he showed me his business log, reporting that his yearly sales had fallen by 31% from the year before. Because of that, he decided to withdraw from his store and went to look for another job.
I know Slashdot people object to the term piracy, but it definitely hurts others, be it artists, store-owners, or corporate suits. I know the movie industry could never collapse like that, but perhaps the events I have seen with my friend in the adult entertainment industry are harbingers of what may happen to your local video store owner as movie piracy becomes large-scale. I dislike the MPAA, but I think they have a duty to protect everyone in the movie business from potential damage. I hate to say this, but good luck in your suit, MPAA.
"The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries."
"The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries."
- Marquis De Sade
And links are not a breach of copyright.
the RIAA is targeting companies that make a point to offer copyrighted music. there is also an interview with hillary rosen on news.com where she specifically says that they are not just randomly suing people.
in short, the assertion that they will be going after google is goddamned stupid.
a search for mettalica mp3z on scour looks like this, whereas one on google gives you this.
you can download the mp3z directly from within the scour 'interface.' that is NOT neutral.
have a nice day.
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blue
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
Mmmm The good 'ol MPAA
You have to love quotes like this:
"This lawsuit is about stealing," MPAA president Jack Valenti said in a press conference this morning. "Technology may make stealing easier, but it doesn't make it right."
I find it funny just how vocal he can be... In the press that is.
Get him into a courtroom and you hear things like this and (real audio version) like this.
Nevermind the megacorporation influence. Anyone this evasive is IMO extremely untrustworthy...
Wait... He heads the MPAA you say??? WELL I NEVER!!!
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!