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MPAA Wants ISPs to Disconnect Persistent Pirates (torrentfreak.com)
Ernesto Van der Sar, reporting for TorrentFreak: The MPAA wants Internet providers and services to take stronger actions against persistent copyright infringers. Ideally, the most egregious pirates should lose their accounts permanently, the group says. To accomplish this ISPs should be required to track the number of notices they receive for each account. In recent weeks, many groups and individuals have voiced their opinions about the future of the DMCA, responding to a U.S. Copyright Office consultation. This includes the MPAA, which acts on behalf of the major Hollywood studios. In a 71-page submission the group outlines many problems with the current law, asking for drastic reforms. Ideally, the group would like search engines to enforce a "stay down" policy ensuring that content can't reappear under different URLs. In addition, it would like registrars to suspend domain names of pirate sites, such as The Pirate Bay.The problem is that ISPs don't necessarily see this abuse as a problem.
Copying that DVD is still promoted as illegal and copyright infringement (all rights reserved, including ones they don't have). See DMCA.
Fail.
"If you give a copy of that file to a friend, that may actually harm the distributor." Prove it. Even you admit it only MAY. Probably won't.
Fail.
"Correlation does not equal causation" However, causation will cause correlation.
Fail.
"Advertising and exposure certainly do increase revenue, despite your straw man argument" You just agreed that there's a BENEFIT to piracy for the content industry. "advertising and revenue are obtained through ads in other media, trailers, and film reviews" All of which are done by pirating it just as readily as "official" channels.
Fail x2
"None of these involve giving away a copy of the full movie for free" Which still doesn't constitute actual harm to the copyright owner.
Fail.
"which would reduce or eliminate the need for the customer to purchase a legal copy of the movie." Just as much as a bad review would. Which isn't illegal. Or loaning out a copy. Which isn't copyright infringement. Or getting mates round to watch. Or any number of things.
Fail.
As to "purchase a legal copy of the movie." if I legally purchased the DVD I ripped, that is a legal copy of the movie I copied. Only if I sold it to them (which again they assert is illegal) would that copy become "illegal".
Fail.