FBI Anti-Piracy Seal

Supp0rtLinux writes "Looks like the FBI is giving a new anti-piracy seal for entertainment and software products. Looks like now the RIAA and MPAA pursuits will add a new federal level to future prosecutions." I'm pretty sure that our forms of media already contain warnings against unauthorized duplication, rebroadcasting, and public performance, but now it's in logo form!

Comments

Not a big deal..

[SoIosoft]

It's not like anyone paid attention ever to the FBI warnings at the beginning or end of VHS tapes.

Re:Not a big deal..

[nihilogos]

Yeah, but we won't be able to fast-forward through them on a DVD. I rented a DVD the other night that wouldn't let me skip the previews, which is reason enough to go get a pirated copy.

wooooooo, so neat and pretty.....too bad

[Sergeant Beavis]

it doesn't do a damn thing to catch terrorist. You'd think they had more importaint things to do like prevent another 9/11.

Oh well, just remember to duck and cover.

Re:wooooooo, so neat and pretty.....too bad

[bonch]

You'd think they had more importaint things to do like prevent another 9/11.

I hate this line of thinking. As though an organization only focuses on one thing at a time. "I guess they don't have more important things to do." As though deciding to put out an anti-piracy logo consumed 100% of their resources and manpower. They probably hired some marketing company to do it anyway.

Re:wooooooo, so neat and pretty.....too bad

[telstar]

"it doesn't do a damn thing to catch terrorist. You'd think they had more importaint things to do like prevent another 9/11."

• If the FBI were to only focus on one problem, the law breakers would know exactly which laws they could get away with breaking.

Re:wooooooo, so neat and pretty.....too bad

[notque]

I hate this line of thinking. As though an organization only focuses on one thing at a time. "I guess they don't have more important things to do." As though deciding to put out an anti-piracy logo consumed 100% of their resources and manpower. They probably hired some marketing company to do it anyway.

So what percentage of money/time do you feel is valid in creating a symbol that is widely ignored, and ineffective?

Re:wooooooo, so neat and pretty.....too bad

[notque]

Not only do cybercrimes have the potential to endanger lives

So the highly unlikely possibility of death makes cybercrimes the 3rd priority of the FBI.

Terrorism would be number 1, so would murder, or serial rapists be number 4?

Re:wooooooo, so neat and pretty.....too bad

[iminplaya]

...but cybercrimes covers a vast number of crimes.

Therein lies another problem. They're painting this with a very broad brush, like terrorism. They can tack on huge sentences for the most trivial of violations, simply because it falls under the category of cybercrime or terrorism. I understand your point about safety related issues, but we're talking about money here. Hardly a valid point compared to murder, rape, assault, etc. They've put corporate profits ahead of all these.

Re:wooooooo, so neat and pretty.....too bad

[Kirth]

Terrorism would be number 1, so would murder, or serial rapists be number 4?

Are you crazy? Number 4 is of course "consumption of illicit drugs".
--

Yeah, great marketing....

[0mni]

Great now anyone who buys a cd will have to listen to a 40 year old man tell you to report piracy. It almost makes me want to get piranted cds more that way.

Re:Yeah, great marketing....

[bonch]

What's the point of this article? I have a feeling it was only posted so all the pirating Slashdotters can make fun of it. "But they already have one, it's called (c)." "Will I have to update the warning logos on my burned movies now?"

I don't see how it's newsworthy. They're acknowledging that illegal piracy is becoming a big trend amoung the younger kids and so want to keep the reminder out there that it is against the law by putting up a logo.

I remember software of the early 90s displaying big red text boxes with SPA anti-piracy hotline numbers and everything upon program exit. Try starting up Doom/Doom 2 sometime and see the warning text as the game loads!

Re:Yeah, great marketing....

[wo1verin3]

It's like those stupid ads in the movie theatres telling you that you should pay to see a movie and not copy it.

DON'T YOU THINK YOU MAY BE TARGETTING THE WRONG AUDIENCE? YOU KNOW? THE PEOPLE WHO PAID FOR THE TICKET?! (no free pass trolls pls kthx)

I cause a ruckus every movie I see and my gf tells me to shutup...

Doesn't hurt me

[ObviousGuy]

It's a label.
It spells out explicitly that the product is covered by copyright and it also specifies the maximum penalty for violation of the copyright.

No harm, no foul.

Re:Doesn't hurt me

[Anonymous Coward]

More to the point, why is the FBI spending money on propaganda that is attached to private goods for sale to the general public?

These are not like health warnings on cigarette packs; these are threats with the weight of government put on packaging at the request of the entertainment monopoly.

It stinks. It makes the FBI look like hired enforcers. Can I get an FBI label to put on my car saying "The FBI says Grand Theft Auto is a bad thing"?

If the MPAA/RIAA wants warning stickers, they should make their own, and not use FBI logos and its implicit authority to intimidate people.

Permission

[Luigi30]

Oh my god... A LOGO! I think I'm gonna pause... and then keep going. I mean, come on. You have that stuff there. All a logo's gonna do is make people glance at it, then copy it. ESRB anyone?

Umm... Ok

[buffer-overflowed]

From the article:
The seal would enable the music and movie industries to deliver on their stated belief that education is as important as enforcement in combating piracy.

That makes no sense whatsoever, the people that control the original content are not capable of putting in little blurbs? They need an FBI seal for education purposes? Which can be stripped out just as easy as anything the RIAA/MPAA could put in....

Riiiiggghtttt.

So the question

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we get a "piracy" seal then for works whose copyright owners intend for them to be abused? Negativland should get on this right away.

But it already exists

[Nakito]

And it looks sort of like this: (C)

criminal or civil?

[genixia]

The seal, marked by the "FBI Anti-Piracy Warning" label, is accompanied by a statement that criminal copyright infringement is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

...and what about the old plain-jane civil copyright infringments?

Re:criminal or civil?

[Rick_T]

> My guess is it will lock our remotes out for
> twice as long ... and it's probably only
> going to get worse.

Standard movie-watching practice in this house (since we moved to DVD from laserdisc) is to put the disc in a few minutes before actually turning the rest of the home theater on.

We don't watch the warning(s), the annoying previews, etc. Wake me when the movie starts. :)

Good article quote:

[Mad_Rain]

"Keith Kupferschmid, VP of the anti-piracy division of the SIIA, said piracy also remains rampant in the software industry, costing U.S. companies about $12 billion a year in lost licensing revenue....."While the seal will not solve the problem, we feel it will aid the software industry in its war against piracy.""

So let me get that last part straight - "We're trying this anyway, and it's not going to work."

So why bother, and/or what strategy might work?

Wel...

[Anonymous Coward]

Movie execs also are worried about lost revenue from DVD sales and rentals. "We absolutely need downstream revenue to survive," said Ken Jacobsen, senior VP and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the MPAA, noting that only four of 10 movies earn enough at the box office to recoup the average of $89 million spent on producing and marketing a film.

Maybe if they stop hiring the 20 million 'bennifer' actors/actresses and start spending just a 10th of that money on the script and they might see some profit.

An informal credo...

[Faust7]

Neither seal, nor EULA, nor copy-protection, nor IP issues, nor ethical ramifications will dissuade the determined pirate.

Is anyone else disturbed by this quote?

[mynameis (mother ...]

Jana Monroe, assistant director of the FBI's cyberdivision, said the unit, created 18 months ago in large part to help hunt perpetrators of digital copyright infringement, will continue to get significant funding from the bureau. Monroe said preventing and prosecuting cybercrimes is now the FBI's No. 3 priority, behind anti-terrorism efforts and counterintelligence operations.

3rd highest priority is cybercrime!?!?
This is more important that say forensics???

My god if that doesn't smack of special interests gone horribly, horribly, wrong.

And that's without even addressing what how slippery a slope the prevention of virtual crimes would seem to be.

Re:This existed long before the DMCA...

[Xzzy]

> deserve the same level of copyright protection, so why not?

That's why this logo is stupid, printing a silly message is NOT protection. It's just a scare tactic.

Re:no

[yerfatma]

Yeah, but you sure as shit can't do it with DVDs. Lost in Translation came with a nice warning followed by 10 minutes of trailers I couldn't skip. It's not like I own the DVD player and TV or anything.

Manipulated numbers?

[Via_Patrino]

From the article:
"only four of 10 movies earn enough at the box office to recoup"(the money)"spent on producing and marketing a film"

Look, they're saying about box office. Now from the 60 minutes about internet movie "piracy":

"Fifty percent of the revenues for any movie come out of home video"

The quote from the first article gives the impression that most movies are not profitable.
Does anyone also think they were manipulating numbers there?

Re:Manipulated numbers?

[bonhomme_de_neige]

Does anyone also think they were manipulating numbers there?

Absolutely. Reread the wording carefully:

noting that only four of 10 movies earn enough at the box office to recoup the average of $89 million spent on producing and marketing a film.

So what they're effectively saying is that the average cost for a movie is $89m, and only 4 out of 10 movies make more than $89m. But that doesn't mean 4 out of 10 movies are profitable - the other 6 probably had much lower budgets and consequently broke even with a much lower revenue.

For example: let's say 4 movies cost $120m each to produce (the likes of Titanic, T2, etc.). Then to make the average 89m per film the other 6 cost about 68m each. Now let's say the 4 big budget films (due to superior film quality, more aggressive marketing, etc) make huge profits, while the other 6 only make 75m each. They still made a profit but they didn't make the requisite 89m. Now this scenario has been turned into "only 4 out of 10 movies are profitable" (that's not what they said, but that's what everyone heard), even though all the movies made a profit.

Disturbing...

[EvilTwinSkippy]

I'm a bit disturbed by the last paragraph. Anti-Piracy is not the FBI's number 3 priority behind Anti-terrorism and counterintelligence.

As a taxpayer I can think of a hell of a lot of things the FBI should be spending it's time on WAY before jailing bootleggers.

Well, at least they are making a distinction between terrorists, spies, and copyright infringers.

"Piracy"?

[haggar]

Shouldn't /. take a stand of principle, and do not use the word "piracy" to describe unauthorized software copying?

As soon as it is ripped...

[david_reese]

The seal is completely useless. $DIETY forbid these old-world dumbasses realize that physical prevention does nothing for a completely digital medium (unless they manage to infest your ID3 tag, too maybe).

I wonder if this wonderful new self-adhesive artwork will increase the price of CD/DVDs? Like oh, maybe a $1 a media? How about the Recording Industry^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HCartel then decides that the Artist must pay this fee as part of the contract, also?

Open Source/Free Software logo or seal?

[Eric Smith]

Perhaps we should come up with a "Copy all you want, we won't sue!" logo or seal for Open Source and/or Free Software? Since the FBI is trying to get more public recognition that you're not supposed to make unauthorized copies of proprietary software, maybe there's a corresponding opportunity to make the benefits of Open Source a little more visible.

Re:It's not their fault

[Eric Smith]

The FBI is an essential and necessary part of the U.S. government.

It is neither essential nor necessary. In fact, it is questionable whether the U.S. Constitution actually gives the federal government the power to have such a police force.

There's no obvious reason why law enforcement can't be left to the states. For that matter, there's no obvious reason why most functions currently performed by the federal government can't be performed by the states instead, and probably at lower cost to the taxpayers. Sending tax dollars to Washington D.C. to pay for things that are done in other parts of the country just burns up a larger fraction of the money in bureaucracy.

Unfortunately, they do

[Anonymous Coward]

"As though an organization only focuses on one thing at a time"

No, that's not what it means.

It means that since the FBI failed to prevent 9/11 last time, it means they need to spend MORE effort next time.

Since their resources are finite, it would be better by far to prevent another 9/11. The way to do this would be to stop being the protection ARM of the MPAA and RIAA (et al).

I hope that's clear.

Moron.

Re:no

[first.last]

since I've never seen a retail DVD with unskippable commercials

You must not have seen very many retail DVDs then....or any porno DVDs, them fuckers are irritatingly long.