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MPAA Boss Admits SOPA and PIPA Are Dead, Not Coming Back

Posted by Soulskill on from the time-to-schedule-the-victory-lap dept.

concealment points out comments from MPAA CEO Chris Dodd, who has acknowledged that SOPA and PIPA were soundly — and perhaps permanently — defeated. Quoting Ars Technica: "Dodd sounded chastened, with a tone that was a far cry from the rhetoric the MPAA was putting out in January. 'When SOPA-PIPA blew up, it was a transformative event,' said Dodd. 'There were eight million e-mails [to elected representatives] in two days.' That caused senators to run away from the legislation. 'People were dropping their names as co-sponsors within minutes, not hours,' he said. 'These bills are dead, they're not coming back,' said Dodd. 'And they shouldn't.' He said the MPAA isn't focused on getting similar legislation passed in the future, at the moment. 'I think we're better served by sitting down [with the tech sector and SOPA opponents] and seeing what we agree on.' Still, Dodd did say that some of the reaction to SOPA and PIPA was 'over the top' — specifically, the allegations of censorship, implied by the black bar over Google search logo or the complete shutdown of Wikipedia. 'DNS filtering goes on every day on the Internet,' said Dodd. 'Obviously it needs to be done very carefully. But five million pages were taken off Google last year [for IP violations]. To Google's great credit, it recently changed its algorithm to a point where, when there are enough complaints about a site, it moves that site down on their page — which I applaud.'"

4 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. Exactly as they want you to think by 54mc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Make you think it's dead, that way when they bring it back under another name, you won't notice.

    --
    Joy! Beautiful spark of the gods!
    1. Re:Exactly as they want you to think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Its dead until the elections are over, then don't be surprised if it comes back.

    2. Re:Exactly as they want you to think by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 5, Insightful

      These bozos don't realize that they have lost control of information. Once you put information out it and people want it the information will go everywhere. Before they could release a movie and they controlled the flow of the physical film, then they released the video cassette and again they could mostly control this (some piracy) but now the only control they have is mostly at the film editing level. In the past they abused this control by releasing the films slowly around the world. People in Canada thought it sucked as we got the films after the US but people in Britain really thought it sucked as they got them long after us and much of the world had to wait for video. Places in Africa had theaters that showed video-taped films on big screens.

      But now the film companies have put up so many barriers to my seeing their stuff that piracy is logical. I go to the theater for a 9:15 film arriving say 9:05. For those 10 minutes the theater blasts cell phone and car commercials at me. Then at 9:15 they start showing trailers and around 9:30 the film begins but not really it is advertizements for the various levels of production company and more advertisements for the actors and directors so maybe around 9:32 I am seeing a movie that I payed $13 for nearly 30 minutes earlier. Renting a movie is much the same except that I don't know where to rent movies anymore. But if you do get a blue ray most players won't let you skip past the various warnings and even sometimes the trailers.

      Now compare that to pirating a movie. Download time 5-10 minutes, cost almost nothing, restrictions: none. So you set the download, get the download and fast forward to the exact moment the real movie starts.

      But the one restriction is that it is slightly hard to do. Most people will have difficulty getting a movie onto their computer, finding the file, sending it to a large TV somehow, and then controlling the movie. And this is where the movie industry has a chance. They could make it really easy for most people to use any box (game consoles, apple TV, roku) like netflix and just get the movie for a reasonable price. If the theater charges me $13 don't think you can either charge me more (for my convenience) or anything even close; I know that if you are distributing it directly to me that you have a huge savings so at $2 per movie I will happily watch a zillion movies; at $9.99 a movie I'll find a better use for my money.

      This brings me to another point. In this modern age people are finding better uses for their money so don't blame all your dropping revenues on piracy. A blockbuster video game can make billions, that money is coming out of people's entertainment budget which once went to movies and music.

  2. Unintentional honesty by Tackhead · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Every studio I deal with has a distribution agreement with Google," said Dodd. "We've divided up this discussion in a way that doesn't really get us moving along as a people."

    Translation: Dammit, what part of "cartel" have my clients forgotten they once understood?