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New Round of Lawsuits in Preparation for Oscars
An anonymous reader wrote to mention CNNMoney's coverage of the latest round of MPAA lawsuits targeting end users. From the article: "The civil suits against unnamed "John Doe" defendants seek up to $150,000 per downloaded digital file and come as the film industry prepares for its annual Oscar telecast in Hollywood where awards for top films and stars are given out."
Unfortunately (stupidly?), the *AAs are looking at both up- and down- loading as equally wrong.
"Napster users infringe at least two of the copyright holders' exclusive rights: the rights of reproduction, 106(1); and distribution, 106(3). Napster users who upload file names to the search index for others to copy violate plaintiffs' distribution rights. Napster users who download files containing copyrighted music violate plaintiffs' reproduction rights." See A&M RECORDS, Inc. v. NAPSTER, INC., 239 F.3d 1004 (9th Cir. 2001) (emphasis added)."
Untill just recently, they've taken a "kill the head and the body dies" approach by getting the big uploaders.
Why do I M2 everything negatively?
The stuff off the internet is usually at best described as low quality with choppy motion, questionable sound and video artifacts from the compression schemes used.
Absolute bollocks. 1.4Gb XviD, DVD-R rips or HRHD (that high definition rips in high resolution off HDTV) are sometimes _better_ quality than national TV in many countries - and HRHD rips rival _anything_ available to buy here in Europe (while still being playable in HDTV resolutions with an Xbox and a projector/plasma/lcd-tv).
Why buy something of lesser quality when you can download something that actually makes use of the expensive toys you bought?
it's in my head