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MPAA Blames BitTorrent for Star Wars Distribution

Posted by timothy on from the what-do-you-burn-apart-from-witches? dept.

AI Playground writes "Slyck News reports on the MPAA's press release (.doc) blaming the BitTorrent protocol for the leak of Episode III. MPAA President and CEO Dan Glickman: 'There is no better example of how theft dims the magic of the movies for everyone than this report today regarding BitTorrent providing users with illegal copies of Revenge of the Sith. The unfortunate fact is this type of theft happens on a regular basis on peer to peer networks all over the world.'"

12 of 1,196 comments (clear)

  1. they need to be stopped by timmarhy · · Score: 5, Informative

    from making misleading claims like this. it's already been ruled that copyright infringement is NOT theft

    --
    If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
    1. Re:they need to be stopped by tomhudson · · Score: 4, Informative
      Just wait. Soon the Book Printers Association of America will come after you for theft!
      Don't laugh. I got a notice for an overdue book one time (they had screwed up - there was no such book in existence), and it included the notice that if I didn't return the book, I could be liable to a fine of $300 or up to 30 days in the clink on conviction.

      Less than a year later, a woman made it onto the evening news by refusing to pay the fine, and her lawyer contesting the law. Turns out minicipal ities don't have the authority to criminalize overdue books.

    2. Re:they need to be stopped by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 4, Informative
      For years, we had an economy that was quite happy supporting both purchase and rental of videos.

      Did you forget that the MPAA fought the very idea of videos tooth and nail when VCRs were introduced?

      If they hadn't been smacked down by the US supreme court, they would never have been able to benefit from the fruits of the purchase and rental of videos.

      Since they didn't seem to want this revenue stream in the first place, why should anyone care about how the Internet impacts it now?

  2. BitTorrent's fault? by sik0fewl · · Score: 4, Informative

    I could have swore it was leaked by there own employees. But it's BitTorrent's fault, you say?

    --
    I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
  3. Re:Copyright by masklinn · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes it is, because commercial or not it's still unauthorized distribution of copyrighted work

    --
    "The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
  4. not enough magic? by yagu · · Score: 5, Informative

    From TFA:

    MPAA President and CEO Dan Glickman: 'There is no better example of how theft dims the magic of the movies for everyone than this report today regarding BitTorrent providing users with illegal copies of Revenge of the Sith.
    and now, from a syndicated article in the Herald Sun (among MANY other papers):
    THE final chapter in the Star Wars movie saga grossed a record $US50 million ($66 million) from its first 24 hours in North American theatres, the highest box office tally ever for a single day, 20th Century Fox said.
    I guess the most revenue ever just isn't enough magic for Glickman.... he really does care about us after all!
  5. Re:Of course by Sendy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Pirates are real!

    --
    GNU guru and mainframe hacker
  6. Re:Not only BitTorrent by pocketfullofshells · · Score: 5, Informative

    I thought it was funny the MPAA still continues to only blame the end distribution for these problems, i.e. the p2p systems where it can take days to get these files. Forget the fact that someone on the inside ripped it 2 days prior to release, forget the fact that the only reason its on bit torrent or any P2P network is that it was on the newsgroups first.

    Its funny... the fact that the newsgroups never make it on the news.

  7. The Supreme Court agrees by GoddessEvilena · · Score: 5, Informative

    Back in 1985 a man named Dowling was prosecuted for the Interstate Transportation of Stolen Property for selling infringing copies of Elvis records. U.S. Supreme Court in DOWLING v. UNITED STATES, 473 U.S. 207 (1985) http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?n avby=search&court=US&case=/us/473/207.html struck this down because copyright infringement is not theft. You have to deprive your victim of the item in order to steal it from them. Making copies doesn't deprive anyone of what it being copied, therefore its not theft.

  8. Re:And this is news? by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes I too want to go out and spend $15,000 or more on equipment so I can save the $10 or less for a ticket to the movie theater.

    You are off by about an order of magnitude.

    Cheapest highly-functional system:
    $ 700 - 800x600, ~800 lumen projector
    $ 200 - 92" wide da-lite high-power screen
    $ 60 - Cheap phillips play-everything progressive DVD player
    $ 500 - Any of 10 or so decent Home theater in a box combos.
    --------
    $1460 Total

    Reasonably priced, "sweet-spot" priced system:
    $1200 - 1024x768 ~2300 lumen projector (brighter than a plasma -)
    $ 200 - 92" wide da-lite high-power screen (110 ft/lamberts)
    $ 300 - Avel Linkplayer2 plays-everything plus high-def DVD player
    $ 400 - Pioneer 49tx receiver
    $ 800 - Any of 5 or so different, good-quality 5.1 speaker/sub sets
    ---------
    $2900 Total

    Those are the kind of price-points it takes to get a really big screen experience at home. Those numbers tend to look surprisingly low to people like yourself who have never seriously thought about getting a projection system.

    More people ought to be looking, front-projectors beat out "regular" tv's at just about every price-point over ~$500. Once you've watched 8-foot-wide HDTV, you'll never be able to turn on a regular tv set again.

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  9. Re:the blame game by matts-reign · · Score: 5, Informative

    Bittorrent is used to allow large files to be shared without having to have a heavy-duty server. This is good for free software developers and GNU and the GPL and open source and to prevent the slashdot effect.

    --
    Waffles rock.
  10. Re:By all means... by zurab · · Score: 4, Informative
    1. Bypassing the publisher's license to enjoy the author's conceptual work, effectively "stealing" the use of the license.

    There's no license required to use/enjoy/read/view/etc. anyone's work that's publically available. Have you borrowed a CD from a friend? Bought a book from a used book store? Did you have to obtain a separate "license" from the associated publishers to use or enjoy the content? No, because there is no license required to use copyrighted works as long as you don't violate the copyright law.

    2. Depriving the author the privilege of gaining compensation for your enjoyment of his conceptual work, effectively "stealing" his compensation payment.

    There's no such privilege associated with copyright law. Copyright law applies to copying and redistribution, not to "enjoyment" as you are using the term. In other words, you don't need an "enjoyment license" from the publisher to read their books.

    Sure, you could define the word "stealing" as "copyright infringement" and then turn around and offer your definition as a proof that copyright infringement is indeed stealing. But that's not what the law says because the underlying concepts for those 2 terms are significantly different, and you haven't even considered differences between the associated laws, cases of violations both criminal and civil, consequences and punishments, etc..