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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."
I'm all for free movies, but when people sell them, they should get arrested. :)
Save the bandwidth for me.
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.
I don't know who's worse: people paying cops to enforce the law, or cops that won't enforce it unless you pay them extra.
Telemarketer called you; you're on the do not call list?
click here
So where do you draw the line between tipping an officer for doing you a "favor" and bribing him to do you a "favor"?
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
The MPAA giving to someones campaign funds is perfectly legal, lets say a Police Chief, who then in turn is tough on copyright crimes.
Yup, business as usual.
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?
Uh.. No Officer.. I just read it on slashdot that you accept cash.
hilarious
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.
No, no; a lot of other bands are being copied too, not just Ludacris.
Then you get a situation where whoever pays the cops the most gets the most justice.
We already have a problem with police going after more high profile crimes involving a lot of money, rather than going after less high profile crimes which involve less money but more harm to the individual.
For example, if a little old lady is scammed out of $10,000 by a guy who says he will fix her leaking roof, that causes her a lot of harm.
In contrast, if someone distributes music online and costs the music industry $100,000, which is highly unlikely, the police will go after those guys with more vigor, even though the music industry won't feel the sting of that guy's actions much if at all.
Perhaps the reason the MPAA and RIAA is loosing 3.5 billion is because spending the money on bent officials?
Shill!
So where do you draw the line between tipping an officer for doing you a "favor" and bribing him to do you a "favor"?
I tip
You bribe
The MPAA induces massive police corruption
Living in New York is an expensive lifestyle. But on the other hand, New York cops really seem to enjoy themselves when it comes to corruption. Take for example last year's Republican convention. New York Cops did their best to round up thousands of people, stick them in an asbestos contaminated concentration camp and then charge them with crimes they never committed.
The Banno Story - Corrupt nyc cops lie, the DA encourages and participates in the lies.. get caught red handed
Police Perjurers
another story related to the new york DA editing/manipulating video tapes
Google the story, hundreds of cases have been dropped because the Police were inventing stories that never happened and then having the DA charge innocent people with full knowledge.
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.
Why is it that this makes me want to do a little happy dance? :)
I bet the MPAA thought that while their actions might have been *technically* illegal, they certainly weren't hurting anybody.
Sound familiar?
Sugapablo
New York's finest paid by MPAA
Bust down your door and take your movie away!
In de car or on de horse,
They'll take your DVD's with excessive force.
Bad cops, bad cops.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
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.
Aside from the fact that they are not underpaid, there is this problem. If you have a "tip" system, pretty soon they only enforce laws to benefit those who tip them. Want that burglary investigated? Tip them, or they will "ignore it due to more pressing matters".
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
You have clearly never worked in the service sector. When I worked in the state of Virginia as a waiter I earned roughly half of minimum wage. The rest was expected to be made up with tips. The federal guvment assumes you will get 8-9% of each check in tips and the IRS taxes you for it. So if you don't tip your server still has to pay the IRS taxes on that tip they didn't receive.
Please tip. If you can't afford to tip then go eat at McDonalds.
The Information Revolution will be fought on the command line.
Increase Sales
Reduce Cost
The MPAA considers piracy to be a "cost" that they wish to control, to assist their bottom line.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
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!)
The tip is supposed to be paid for services above and beyond the most basic acceptable service. If a waiter doesn't provide acceptable service, it is the customer's responsibility to not only NOT TIP, but also to inform the manager of the bad service.
What is wrong in the above statement is that not tipping is only acceptable in the case of bad service. This is totally wrong, and contrary to the whole concept of tipping.
Tipping is intended as a means of a waiter/tress to earn income above and beyond what they normally earn (which is typically below minimum wage). However to earn that, it is expected, from the customer's perspective, that the waiter must perform services above and beyond what is acceptable as "normal", not what is accepted as "bad service".
I hate bad tippers. I think they are cheapskates and are ripping off good waiters. However, I have to reproach any waiter who thinks that it is my responsibility to pay him extra just for providing "adequate" service. If I wanted expected service, I would have gone to McDonalds.
It's not the first time the RIAA has been involved in criminal activity.
Law enforcement goes wild and imprisons students for sharing a few thousand dollars worth of mp3s. It's about time we start imprisoning music industry CEOs who steal $143 million from the public.
An MPAA tip, for example, led to the recent prosecution of Randy Guthrie, the black sheep of a blueblood New York family, who was recently sentenced to 21/2 years in a Chinese jail for selling nearly $1 million in pirated movies over the Internet.
Why don't they just say 10.5 years?
You're SUPPOSED to tip police officers, it's only common courtesy.
How much does this great service cost? I can think of people I would like to have arrested...
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
Next thing you know they start paying politicians to change laws.
Oh shit, nevermind...
There's a reason there's a law called the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
A true Republican president would be fighting against the trusts, unlike the corporate whore who occupies the White House.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Though when I'm in the US I do try to remember that the waiters really are serfs and if I don't tip they'll starve. What a lovely system you guys have...
--
USA: home of the world's largest terrorist training camp.
Don't get the two mixed up.
The RIAA is a criminal cartel that buys their own cops
The MPAA is a criminal cartel that buys their own laws
(oh and if any lawyers representing either of those organisations are reading this, please sue me for sying that, I'd just love the chance see the expression on your faces when a judge agrees with me)
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
No they're not. Candy costs about 55 cents a bar now, when it used to be about 33 cents when I was a kid. Does this mean if I were to shoplift a candy bar, it's the store's fault? Or the candy manufacturer?
While I'm certainly not defending the MPAA's actions or saying that things are hunky dory, their shitty actions are not a reasonable justification to steal.
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Notice what the man from the MPAA said:
-->
"We don't give cash to police officers," said Bill Shannon, an MPAA anti-piracy official.
--
Isn't that an odd way of putting a "denial"?
So Billy, what kind of gratuities do you actually use if not cash?
But most countries are socialist-leaning, so I'm not surprised you think so lowly of people who actually have to "sing for their supper".
How is it that so many people in the US see everything in an axis of Capitalism-Socialism?
The situation is as follows: Restaurant owners make money from the work of waiting staff. However, the waiting staff are paid on the whim of the customer (with less than minimum wage from owner contribution). The restaurant owner is essentially getting a free ride from the waiting staff. The waiter or waitress has no security and never mind the fact that many of the factors that contribute to "good service" are outside of the waiting staff's hands. If the restaurant owner understaffs, serves bad food or hassles the waitress so that maybe she doesn't feel like smiling or flirting with a customer, then it's not his problem because he's not the one that will be short-changed.
There's a lot to be said for a system in which everyone knows how much they're getting paid and how much they're expected to pay.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
" Now now we all want to think the MPAA are guilty but as TFA says its an allegation thats being investigated."
Isn't this similar to the record and movie companies who want to get info from ISP's about alleged copyright infringement without going to a court of law?
The media companies have *seen* people stealing, so they assume people guilty and want to just fine them directly without doing that long, involved courtroom stuff.
Am I the only one who sees the irony here?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
The only cop I would ever expect to surf Slashdot is Robocop.
Cheers, officer. Just having a funny.
blog
Yeah well thost Babylon 5 sets cost just pennies to manufacture. The shows were already produced, so no production costs went into making them for the DVD. A few special features cost very little: a cameraman might cost $20/hour and the interviewees are probably not paid at all, or maybe a couple hundred bucks. There is more profit to be made on TV show sets because production costs are nearly zero and costs are still high.
So, tell me again why DVDs cost as much as they do? Ah yes, what the market will bare. Looks like a significant portion of the market has decided that prices are too high.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Why is it that I am the only one who seems to understand that we need to go back to harsh punishments for powerful people (e.g., politicians, CEO's, etc) who are obviously crooked. We need to try, convict and sentence all this powerful and corrupt people. Sentence them to death by hanging.
That is the only way to swing the pendulum back, to correct the culture.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
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.
Yeah well thost Babylon 5 sets cost just pennies to manufacture. The shows were already produced, so no production costs went into making them for the DVD. A few special features cost very little: a cameraman might cost $20/hour and the interviewees are probably not paid at all, or maybe a couple hundred bucks. There is more profit to be made on TV show sets because production costs are nearly zero and costs are still high.
So, tell me again why DVDs cost as much as they do? Ah yes, what the market will bare. Looks like a significant portion of the market has decided that prices are too high.
Ignoring your ignorance about what things in the real world cost, if it's too expensive then just don't buy the shit.
Every non-commodity item is sold at a price-point of what the market will bear. Do you think your salary should be based upon the minimum it costs you to pay rent, buy a few articles of clothing, and pay for some food? Maybe you're happy with subsisting through life, but most people want to get paid what the going market rate is. If the market will bear a $100K a year salary, I doubt you'll find people saying "Well, I can really get by on only $30K, so I'll cut my employer a deal."
Let some other store buy DVDs and you can rent it on the cheap. Or get some friends together and split the cost. Next you'll be whining about how cologne and perfume is just a chemical solution in an alcohol base and that it shouldn't cost more than $2 for a bottle of that new Calvin Klein "Pretension" cologne.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.