MPAA Sued Over DVD Screener Ban

bigjnsa500 writes "Fourteen small movie houses are suing the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) trying to stop the ban on DVD 'screeners'. 'It will chill the financing of independent films by limiting the awards they can receive', say the plaintiffs, who include Talking Wall Pictures, Sandcastle 5 Productions and Salty Features. They feel they are being treated differently because several 'specialty' indy film shops are still allowed to send out 'numbered, encoded videocassettes' to Oscar voters. This ban was issued by MPAA President Jack Valenti initially to stop the illegal distribution of DVD screeners on the Internet."

Comments

Salty Features?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's that? Chef's movie studio?

I'd rather...

[badfrog]

That someone sue over the 10 minutes of commercials I'm forced to watch after putting a DVD in.

Re:I'd rather...

[akiaki007]

Or better yet, over the 15 minutes of TV commercials and consumer product commercials we're forced to watch at the Movie Theatre that I just paid 10$ to go to in order to watch a movie.

This is dumb.

[Anonymous Coward]

They should be able to send out whatever they want or not send it out. I'm so tired of things being settled in court when the answer is simple common sense, if they want to combat some imagined slight through no screeners then fine if the Oscars want to refuse to award any film without screeners then fine. This is ignorant. This country is too fucking sue happy.

Are they upset that the competition is limited?

[Sheetrock]

I know that if I was producing an indie film, I'd gladly welcome the ban as a way of allowing me to further differentiate my product by continuing to offer screeners. The process has been dominated by big studios for too long.

What's the issue here? If anything, I'd expect a big studio to be upset.

Re:Are they upset that the competition is limited?

[UnknowingFool]

All films including indie films were originally banned from sending screeners to voters of awards like Academy, Golden Globe, etc because of misuse of the screeners. Now the ban applies only to lesser awards (best cinematography in a film about sheep-herding, etc). Unfortunately, indie films do very well in these lesser awards. The major awards like Best Picture, etc. are already dominated by the bigger studios in terms of marketing and promotion. So indie films are complaining that this limits their exposure.

The indie films cannot offer a screener in these categories less face the wrath of the MPAA which controls the Academy Awards and a great deal of the movie industry.

exercises in futility.....

[kemster]

trying to stop movies from reaching the internet is like trying to put a baby back into a woman..

Leave the MPAA?

[Hungus]

Why not just leave the MPAA wouldn't that really be the meaning of independent? Or, does anyone know if you must be a member of the MPAA to qualify for the awards? Another option would be for them to send them out anyways and disregard teh MPAA altogether on this. I am no longer part of the movie scene ( though was once a member of NATO) might such an action cause repercusions from SAG et al?

Silly MPAA

[Mr. McGibby]

So I had a thought. The MPAA (at least pre-screener-ban) was trying hard to encode something into screeners to find out who was releasing them. All kinds of silly tricks like putting dots on the screen. The problem was that copiers noticed anything they tried because they were trying to put too much information in there.

Why not simply try to encode one simple bit in the whole movie? Then randomly give out the screeners but keep track of who you give the two different copies to. After say, 5 releases, you've narrowed down the field pretty well. At least they would have an idea of what types of people are releasing the screeners. Oscar judges? Reviewers? Soccer moms?

Anyway, that would certainly help the problem.

sometimes you CAN skip the crap:

[Dynamic Ranger]

When I first got my DVD player I found that if you try to "skip" to the next "chapter" it doesn't work; you have to watch the commercials.

But if you hit "stop" and then "play" without powering off, it goes right to the movie. :)

Re:Well maybe they should

[bluekanoodle]

If you Read the article you will see that they are claiming the if they don't agree to the terms of the ban, then they are cut out of almost 80% of the distribution channels.

The MPAA is basicalling saying, play by our rules, or no one will ever even know your movie exists

It's all getting out of hand

[freeweed]

I went to an advance screening last night for the first time in 5 years or so.

Printed on the back of the ticket was a 10 line disclaimer/EULA/warning about bringing in any "electronic recording equipment", claiming that my attending means I agree to have it confiscated if they find it (yeah, unsigned contracts always hold up in court!).

When we got to the theatre, we had our bags thoroughly searched (this is a leather attache case btw, and I was dressed in a suit and tie). They also ran a metal detector over us, and our bags. It was quite honestly as invasive as an airport screening area.

Then, when we sat down, the promotors did their shpiel, gave away some prizes, and went on a several minute tirade about how we shouldn't steal movies, we're hurting artists, etc. Anyone caught with a camera will be ejected and possible criminal charges brought against them. And (get this) if you see anyone else with a camera, please notify us immediately.

Finally, the movie starts, and I get to listen to another idiot telling me that downloading a movie is no different than stealing a chocolate bar.

I've never, ever felt more like a suspect in my life. After last night, I can understand why Blacks in the US complain about supposed random stops on the freeway. In fact, I almost expected a few police to be on hand.

Of course, for fun I poked around on Kazaa last night, and lo and behold, the movie was there. All it takes is one person, you morons, and inconveniencing and/or pissing off the MILLIONS of people who pay to see your movies is NOT a good way of doing business.

This is the final straw. It was bad enough last week seeing Master & Commander, and those damn brown spots were all over this one scene with mostly light-coloured backgrounds in it, so all I could do was sit there and think "Ok, enough with the dots!" and then lose track of what was going on with the movie.

I can't honesly see myself paying for another movie again, if this is how I'm going to be treated.

Oh, and in case anyone's curious, this happened in Canada. I guess we have our own MPAA equivalent here, or their reach is just that long.

Re:Well maybe they should

[Thud457]

Isn't that anticompetitive behavior?

Wrong.

[Atragon]

Disclaimer: I live in Canada, our dollar is a bit lower than the states, all dollar amounts below are in Canadian dollars. I used to work in a movie theater. Concessions are where the theater makes the majority of its money from. On an average week during the summer, our core concessions (drinks, popcorn, nachos, hotdogs, candy) would net over $40 grand a week. Our RBOs (retail business outlets, ie, Pizza Hut, Burger King) would net between $1 grand and $2 grand per week, each.

Why is it so profitable? Popcorn costs literally pennies per bag, drinks? same deal. Then you pay a high-school student minimum wage to sell them to patrons. Speed of service goals are under 1 minute for a single person order. Min wage here is $6.85/hr. A large popcorn, large drink (which is what they're trained to upsell to) costs $10.75.

Let's do the math, 50 orders per hour (when it's busy, on average), times 10.75/order (on average), results in... 537.50 per hour gross, minus the wage ($6.85, and the food cost, let's be generous and say a whopping $15 for the whole hour), per open cash, and when it's busy, about 10 cashes open, so about $5000 NET per HOUR on a busy night.

Wow, that's not too bad at all.