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Movie Industry Files Injunction Against UK ISP
daedae writes "The Motion Picture Association (MPA), which represents studios including Twentieth Century Fox and Walt Disney, have filed suit in the UK against BT, Britain's largest ISP. The studios are asking for an injunction which would force BT to block access to Newzbin, on the grounds of massive losses to Usenet piracy."
Awh, poor BT, after taking it up the ass for the content owners, they get it shoved up there again!
Remember that when dealing with the content industry, if you give them a finger, they bite of your head.
Once this motion passed, other motions will be easier and easier until the entire internet consist only of sites the content industry approves off. And politicians who are used to compromises let it all happen because they think the content industry will meet them half way. The problem with meeting someone half way is that if it is you who keeps doing this, sooner or later you are completely on the other side.
For those who can read dutch, read it and weep: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/75349/overheid-hollywood-staat-achter-onze-auteursrechtplannen.html
For those who can't read dutch: You poor wretch of a not quite human being. How can you face the dark void that is your miserable life each day?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
to have given an accurate summary? They are not asking for an injunction again Newzbin, that site was sued into oblivion. They are asking for an injunction against Newzbin2 which has arisen to take its place. TFA you submitted says just that.
Actually I can't hold you to that, the article is horridly written.
"The Motion Picture Association (MPA), which represents studios including Twentieth Century Fox and Walt Disney, is urging a judge to grant an order forcing telecoms group BT to cut off access to the Newzbin website."
"The MPA won a court battle against Newzbin last year and the site was taken offline."
"But it reopened abroad under the name "Newzbin2" and is run by anonymous operators, compelling the MPA to take the unusual step of trying to force BT to block the site."
This is why you hire editor's to proof these things children. Someone should have slapped this writer for contradicting himself within his own story.
Because all those using usenet to get movies would otherwise have purchased them? I doubt it.
Is this not the same as suing gun manufacturers for making lethal tools?
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
"The applicants and others have been making huge efforts, not only against the Newzbin website, but against piracy in general and yet the industries are still suffering huge losses to piracy," Richard Spearman, representing the MPA, told the court.
I guess this is as close we'll ever get to hearing them say "Over the past 10 years we've spent a lot of our members' cash trying to kill off sharing sites, yet we've ultimately proven ineffective."
Apple, Amazon, Spotify, and others have affected piracy far more than the RIAA/MPAA/etc. ever will.
The American movie industry has been trying to censor the entire world's internet, in case you hadn't noticed. It being the UK this time is nothing special.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
That's what happens when you make censorship legal, like the UK recently did. People are going to start expecting you to enforce it
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Maybe their "losses" wouldn't be so massive if they weren't spending all their money on lawyers?
How many here has boycotted the xxAA members?
I have, and that makes me a little worried when i see the xxAA use claims of "massive losses" to justify their continuous lawsuit, i mean; When i no longer go to, or rent movies, the xxAA suffers losses, that is after all the point of boycotting them :) BUT, if all the xxAA has to do, is to make the claim; if i am not buying their "content" then i must be stealing it! where does that leave me and my little boycott? is there any point to a boycott, if it can be dismissed so easily? should i just forget it, and start pirating?
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." - Denis Diderot.
This is an attempt to put a precedent into law. The next step will be massive numbers of lawsuits against everything under the sun, clogging up the legal system to the point where they can say "Look, put in a DCMA-style takedown system and we won't have to bother you anymore". Some judge tired of hearing these cases will start the ball rolling. At that point we may as well just hand UK internet over to the MPA.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
At the end of the day, file sharing wont go away. It may well change forms and maybe even go back to sneaker net or "swap meets" but no matter what they do, they won't be able to get back to the 80s revenue streams. (It doesn't help that the music is more crap these days, but thats another argument)
At the end of the day, the world of file sharing has been changed forever by the internet. We can get offshore encrypted proxies for as little as $5.
The other major difference the net has made is that people are better connected and tend to gravitate to like minded people. In the world of instant communication, encryption and dropbox et all, sharing will just mutate into other forms, and groups with similar interests will create their own file sharing platforms and darknets.
Also in my area at least (or my interests) there are more artists giving stuff for free.
The days of mega money from media are gone. All this is akin to trying to put toothpaste back in the tube, it's not going to work.
http://www.writeitfor.us - Writing IT for the IT generation.
I had a similar thought when I saw this story yesterday. BT and the other ISPs in the UK should just kick the MPAA off the internet - cut any service they have in the UK and block all their sites hosted abroad. There's no reason why ISPs should be forced to do business with them.