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MPAA Seeks Stronger Actions To Fight Streaming Video Piracy (streamingmedia.com)
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is stepping into the online video piracy debate and calling for criminal charges against violators, as well as strong coordination between a broad range of online service providers. From a report: The association's recommendations came in response to a call from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's (NTIA) call for comments regarding internet policy concerns. On July 17, the MPAA issued a 40-page document advocating a modernization of online policies in response to rampant illicit activity. While a range of commercial offerings help studios and sports leagues battle online piracy, anyone who has a friend with a Kodi box knows that unrestricted access to popular shows and movies is only a few taps away. The MPAA notes that 6.5 million homes in North America are equipped with a Kodi box, and the North American piracy ecosystem generates $840 million per year.
Why should the MPAA do this when they can get one of their wholly owned subsidiaries (eg, the US Government) to do it for them?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
$850 million a year compared to the filmed entertainment industry's revenue of what, $300 billion +/- per year? I know that doesn't justify people pirating shit, but I'm getting real fucking sick of the "Won't someone please think of the millionaires and billionaires?!" argument.
Have gnu, will travel.
that the industry could use to stream an archive of all old and new movies and shows to a persons home through the internet for a nice affordable price. Maybe one day someone will invent it.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Link sources/citations provided within:
https://thisguy1337s-place.000webhostapp.com/#wall
The Copyright Wall-Of-Shame
Reminder for all that 9 out of 10 times, the people who make a shitstorm about morality and ethics are the same people who don't abide by them and actually do worse things. This number increases to 10/10 with anti-pirate collectives as they have been observed and proven in these past few years of:
88. Adobe failing to pay licensing fees on the sales of Adobe products that contained Dolby technology by refusing to provide the agreed upon sales audits for multiple years over. Demonstrating that the largest and most wealthiest of copyright enthusiasts will also happily ignore copyright conditions when it suits their own agenda.
87. Copyright enthusiast David Lowery casting criticism at professor Michael Geist over the importance of copyright acknowledgement all while failing to obtain the proper license on an image shared in the Blog post.
86. FlightSimLabs planting SecurityXploded.Com's ChromePasswordDump v5.5 to successfully capture the stored Google Chrome passwords of users who are allegedly using product keys that are found on file-sharing sites.
85. The company behind the 2015 drama film Fathers & Daughters having their copyright infringement case being dismissed due to the company's exclusive rights to the movie being sold to a company called Vertical Entertainment who were not part of the lawsuit. (orig)
84. Youtube allowing multiple RIAA members to claim & monetize an uploaded video that contained nothing but white static noise. Illustrating that copyright is fundamentally broken and is only suitable to benefit a very select privileged few.
83. Music copyright advocates using the DMCA and domain seizures to cause irreparable harm to mash up sites like Sowndhaus & Spinrilla by taking action of litigation without ever notifying the website owners of the claim of infringement.
82. Epic Games' taking aggressive judicial action against a 14 year old "Fortnite" cheater over the usage of an online game cheat and multiple free accounts registered with fake email addresses. Demonstrating that copyright litigation is often the action of choice with little consideration of who may be targeted.
81. ABC, AOL, CBS Broadcasting, NBCUniversal, NPR, Time, Viacom, Warner Bros, Yahoo and Ziff Davi settling with numerous photographers due to infringing use of their photographs found throughout their News & Blog articles. In which CBS later counter sue due to a Gunsmoke screen shot being posted on social media in an attempt to reduce their damage settlement. Demonstrating that not even those who actively litigate copyright law don't bare any respect for it.
80. New Zealand's ruling National Party being forced to pay $600k for infringing the copyrights of Eminem's track "Lose Yourself" due to using a derivative song with a similar melody for their campaign ad demonstrating that even when obtaining proper licenses will not prevent a copyright related lawsuit.
79. Four officials of the Russian site-blocking body Rozcomnadzor, (including spokesman, top lawyer, and Anastasiya Zvyagintseva) being charged with fraud and stand accused of having 'employed' ghost staff whose salaries were actually paid to existing employees, on top of their own money all while being allowed to block 4,000 sites on copyright grounds with an additional 41,000 innocent websites blocked as collateral damage demonstrating that copyright law often leaves a trail of harm rather than any potential good.
78. Game developer Atlus targeting the Patreon page of the RPCS3 (Playstation 3) emulator with a DMCA takedown notice due to a comment which sta
I support the idea of being able to shut down these add-on's that are solely used for piracy but I worry that it opens the door to other things that are used for piracy but have legitimate uses as well.
But what is solely used for piracy? I know a lot of people who have Plex servers filled with stuff they actually own and ripped and share their servers with friends. I know a lot of people with Plex servers that they obtained everything on it and share it with their friends. I also own lots of movies that are on my friend's server, but I don't feel like finding the disc for them (probably still in a moving box) so I stream it from said server...does that mean that I'm pirating it? If I had a Kodi box and did the same thing, would that mean I pirated it? I have yet to find a piece of tech that is solely used for piracy.
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
I like how you think, but I seriously doubt that the MPPA would fund any politician that supported this idea so it isn't going to happen.
Also, Criminal prosecution is one thing, and I think that those who make something distributing copyrighted works, if it be money, advertising revenue or something else of value should be subject to criminal charges should the local DA where the person was when the distribution took place decide it's worth it. But Civil suits are quite another. I like your idea that a downloader should only be liable for the fair market value of the material at the same resolution as determined by the retail value of the same general material.
Also, if the material is NOT available for purchase because it's not yet been released at a retail price, the value of the settlement must be capped to the same rate collected per verified viewer as the distributor would have collected from the theaters at the time of viewing. So your first run bootleg copy of the latest blockbuster you show to 3 people would cost you no more than theater tickets would have.
However, if the material is not available for retail sale, being out of print and not available for viewing in theaters, damages are limited to the average cost of a first release offered for retail sale in the last year.
Also, MPPA should offer a "get legal" license, where you can buy a license for downloaded material for personal home use. This would allow you to keep the material you like and give the MPPA a way to get downloaders to "come clean" when they find them and if the MPPA offered rewards for disclosing the source of your download, could really generate some nice revenues and give them a way to issue DCA notices quicker to slow down the flood of material.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The MPAA has money to send a 40-page writeup when comments are being solicited.
What organization can we donate to that will make 40-page writeups in the OPPOSITE direction when comments are being solicited? And advocate for reducing overaggressive enforcement, loosening the stranglehold on the public domain, and promote expansion of fair use, and insisting some piracy be accepted as long as companies can still make a fair profit AND alternate solutions (when there is a real problem to be solved --- other than companies earnestly trying to squeeze out 5% more profit or something by promiting fascist regulations and enforcement) and less severe penalties against individuals?
If us individual consumers and americans aren't represented in these kinds of solicitations for comments, then what will happen is only the MPAA will have the ears of our representatives, and they'll get one-sided laws passed whatever they want.
They hired the New Zealand police to do that to Kim Dotcom. I gather there was nothing in the way of censure dished out to those police by our courts when it was deemed to be "unlawful" so chances are they could hire them again at a very competitive rate and, if they throw in airplane tickets, they'd probably even do the job in other countries if asked nicely.
Certainly, apply criminal charges for piracy... as long as, in such prosecutions, the MPAA proves, beyond doubt, rather than simply a preponderance of evidence (as required under criminal law) that each download or stream represents an actual lost sale to an MPAA member, rather than just a presumption of a lost sale
And (2): The punishment should be proportional to the crime. What's the punishment if I steal a DVD from a store? It should be less than that because I didn't actually deprive anybody of anything.
No sig today...
Let me give you some examples:
1) A bit torrent site, well known for hosting a certain type of content, latest theatrical releases for example, gets a lot of traffic from people who want to download that content. Even though the desired content is effectively given away free and the servers and bandwidth needed to provide that service certainly are not, the site makes a profit through the ad revenue and any marketing data they can harvest and sell. For this case, the content owners should be collaborating on a competitive site where the content is available equally free, of guaranteed quality (encoding, bit rate etc) and legal. Their profits would come from the same sources as the pirate site. The reason they don't do this is because they can't let go of the idea of being able to sell that content, or better yet, rent it to the consumers.
2) There are numerous streaming sites out there, many of whom are not paying license fees for their content. This is very prominent in the anime and hentai genres because Japanese production and distribution companies seem to be reluctant to do the subs, dubs and editing needed to legal market their content elsewhere. (CrunchyRoll not withstanding) Those sites are also making money on content they didn't pay for.
3) There is a recent explosion in Android based digital media appliances whose core purpose is to access all of the free content available online, much of it unlicensed of course. RIAA and the MPAA aren't getting any royalties on that hardware and they can't let go of the idea that they should be. (much like the surtax levied on CD-Rs)
I need a wheelchair van for my son. Help me get the word out. https://www.gofundme.com/wheelchair-van-for-jj
Nope, they got their cake and got to eat it too. You have to pay the blank media extortion fee (on anything that could remotely contain something copyrighted, including hard drives, ssds and USB sticks... I better shut up before they notice that you can use paper to print pictures) while still not being allowed to make any copies.
Essentially, what these con artists got away with was something banks would dream of: A fee they get to cash in on every gun and car because it could be used in a bank robbery, so everyone having and using one must compensate them for the damage done by those that actually use those things in such a fashion.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.