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MPAA Under Investigation for Illegal NYPD Payoffs
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Post is reporting that two NYPD officers are being investigated for taking illegal payoffs from the MPAA for busting sellers of pirated DVDs. According to the article, MPAA investigators would tell the cops where pirated movies were being sold, which is perfectly legal, but, after the bust, they'd give them several hundred dollars in gratuities, which is illegal. Naturally, the MPAA denies all of this."
For a rightious organisation out to protect the lawfull rights of artists they have a rather odd way of practice
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
"The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that it loses $3.5 billion in potential worldwide revenue because of movie piracy."
Surely the can't expect that their raids of arrests will provide them with more sales.
Where they thinking that as long they're already on the red number side, they could just buy themselves some police forces?
Scully: Should we arrest David Copperfield?
Mulder: Yes we should, but not for this.
FTA: Two NYPD veterans are being investigated by Internal Affairs...
From title: MPAA Under Investigation for Illegal NYPD Payoffs
So, who's under investigation here?
The MPAA and the RIAA will stop at nothing to protect their monopolies. These 2 corrupt officers are just a tip of the giant iceberg of people that recieve huge sums from the MPAA and RIAA. Some others - Several politicians, Virus writers. Yes they employ these people to create nastyware to disrupt p2p networks. and many many more people are bribed by these organizations. The MPAA and the RIAA are among the most corrupt organizations in America. And the blatantly lie about their the root cause of their losses almost every year. It is about time they are investigated but I fear they may buy out the investigation.
the MPAA breaking the law to enforce the law. oh the irony.
People have been saying for years that the MPAA need to try harder to stop piracy before the movies get leaked. Closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Maybe it's time they started listening.
Business Voyeur
The wolf reveals it's true colours. Now do the same to the RIAA and throw all their court cases out untill further investigate (which will lead to price fixing and various other crimes being "discovered"). And since it's been proven that this companies buy people off it'll be impossible to buy off the judge/jury because people wille xpect it and if it seems fishy it'll be looked into.
Good game gentleman. You lose this round and hopefully won't come back.
I like muppets.
I think we should run an ad in every movie theatre for MPAA members and affiliates to remind them that "Paying off cops is a crime". We could even show the cops who were paid off in the ad to remind them what happens if you bribe law enforcement officials as part of the cops settlement arrangement.
They want us to obey the law but forget to do it themselves. Great example guys.
The music industry has been involved in payola for years and years, despite it being illegal. Why should they see this as anything different? They'll just come up with yet another excuse as to why this isn't payola. Is it a private gift from one individual to another, which -- totally coincidentally -- happens to be from an RIAA member to a NYPD officer? You can't prove anything! What, you want to outlaw gifts?
(In Soviet Russia, gifts outlaw YOU!)
No surprise there. Police agencies intentionally reject applicants with high intelligence. Don't believe me? Check this out, or this, or this. A cop who can't spell his own name would not surprise me.
How ya like dat?
actually, interviews for actors for dvd-special-features cost a lot more than a couple hundred bucks. heck, just getting the rights to use interview footage from other sources like a movie's "red carpet premiere" can cost in the thousands. (consider how the documentary market is getting stagnated because the news people who hold the rights of post-viet-nam footage are charging too much to the point that non-profit companies like PBS's CPB can't afford it).
the only exception are those for whom their contract involved a percentage of the gross, like the producers, directors, and lead actors. they get paid a substantially higher portion of the dvd sales than the regular actors do.
for this reason, some dvd releases of classic movies don't get the "special edition" treatment up front (ala Mary Poppins, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and Chariots of Fire) -- the sales of the first release measure the interest. the profits are then used to pay the actors and other people (critics such as Leonard Maltin in the Disney films) to film the new interview footage.
its akin to getting a public speaking engagement. those generally run in the thousands, plus transportation and hotel fees, even for small actors like the various Imperial generals/admirals at Star Wars cons. Agents of actors NEVER let them do anything for free, because it reduces their value in the next film's negotiations.
however, its extremely rare for TV show actors to get a percentage of the gross unless its the fifth season and beyond of a HUGE hit like seinfeld or friends. just as the actors normally don't get a piece of syndication sales, they also rarely get a piece of dvd sales.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
That because you live in the USA. in the rest of the world, especially in the developing world, the price of movies are grossly over prices.
I live in a country where if you look at purchasing power parity, our courrency is nearly 60% undervalued against the USD. So stuff here ought to cost only about 40% of what they cost in the US (in other words 60% cheaper).
Yet, the price of a non bootleg DVD movie here is about US$50 and it stays that way. So that makes it 700% more expensive then your US$7 instead of 60% cheaper which is the fair price.
Anyway, thats moot, my point is that the MP/RI-AA's arguement is flawed. A people with very low disposeable incomes are either going to buy a bootleg or not going to buy it at all. So there is no loss there because nobody would have bought the original if piracy didn't exist anyway.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.