The MPAA's Lobbying-Fu is Stronger Than Yours

georgelazenby writes "The Frisco Chronicle reports: While the music industry has been clumsily bullying its way through the federal government, the movie industry has taken a more subtle -- and more effective -- approach. The MPAA has been lobbying individual state legislatures to pass laws reaching far beyond the original DMCA. The proposed laws would permit cable TV companies to 'limit subscribers to using only certain brands of VCRs and could ban TiVo in favor of their own proprietary PVR technologies.' According to one expert, the bills are 'tremendously open-ended and create theoretical and potential criminal liabilities for just about anybody on the planet.'"

Comments

Its amazing that anyone pirates movies anyway!...

[reality-bytes]

I mean, with the utter rubbish that hollywood constantly turns out, why waste bandwidth.

Take for instance the new Italian Job remake....

1) Its been Americanised (which defeats at least 2 plot elements)

2) They use BMW Minis which just wouldn't fit in a normal coach unlike the original bad-ass Austins.

3) The movie appears to take itself seriously where the original was a comedy

4) Apparently, at no point during the film does anyone say "You were only s'posed to blow the bloody doors off!"

5) The original movie had an ending where you didn't know if they got away with it or not; do you think an American ending would be the same?

6) The Minis although painted in red, white and blue use the same colourscheme as the 1969 minis which with the white tops is meant to denote the British union flag.

Now then
What i've been trying to point out here in a very long winded and round-about fashion is that if Hollywood(the Movie industry) doesn't want to give us original ideas in new films but would rather rape older, far superior films, why the hell would I, the consumer want to give them my money. So, if other people think like me, their sales fall

Now a definition IMHO of a good film: Dog Soldiers. It had it all, drama, action, horror, suspense. And all filmed on British and European money. (later bought by fox on realising it was bloody good). British actors and dark British humor make this a film I can watch again and again. :)

So, until the MPAA pulls it's collective fingers out and starts making a worthwhile product, I'm not giving them the time of day.

Oh, and as for any far-reaching laws, that just has a tendancy to make me very, very upset

Re:You are missing the point.

[PaddyM]

How did you post anonymously? Slashdot doesn't give me the option.

I'm with you.

[crovira]

I don't own a TV anymore. I got off the channel merry-go-round and have a LIFE now.

Re:Legal rights to own a radar detector & MP3'

[anubi]

Radar detectors can be fooled.

I guess you know you calibrate one with a tuning fork.

The displacement of the tines when struck cause the microwaves ( at around 10GHz ) to exhibit the same doppler shift as, say, a car passing at 60 MPH.

Well, say, you have a car with a plastic grille, and you have metal fan blades spinning. Whose to say that the blades may have been in perfect view of the beam? The stealth aircraft relies on shaping the surfaces such that radar beams do not reflect properly. Whose to say that the frame of the car, at the instant of taking the reading, emitted the reflection recorded, or if the fan blades did?

One more note... the radar detectors I have seen mostly worked in the 10 GHz region and acted as somewhat of a "spectrum analyser"; that is they were continuously scanning the spectrum around 10GHz and looking for any strong carrier. The 10 GHz is usually generated by a solid-state "gunn" diode. Very low power. Microwave ovens are at 2.45 GHz. Generated via Magnetron vacuum tube by a technique strongly reminescent of how an air whistle works.. that is a whistle works by air streams at high velocity across resonant cavities, a magnetron tube works by electron streams, confined by a magnetic field, passing by resonant cavities. Water absorbs strongly at 2.45 GHz, and the cavities are a convienent size. Anyone have comment on whether 2.45 GHz is in use for traffic radar?

Incidentally, you can find 10GHz handheld oscillators for use in tripping off automotive radar detectors. I guess they could be useful in reminding speeders to obey the 70MPh limits when one passes you at 90+...