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.

Comments

Re:Just hire their own swat team

[DickBreath]

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?

That's a lot of money!

[Anonymous Coward]

$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.

Re:That's a lot of money!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget that it has been proven time and time again through studies and practical application (Incompetech being just one example) that any artist with actual talent and quality product(s) will benefit more from utilizing piracy than warring against it.
Some using piracy as a marketing tool, some eve put their stuff on torrents and make the news among the pirate scene for it which translates into a loyal consumerbase of people who chip in money too (and a loyal base is always better than generic sales since it translates to guaranteed revenue), and even the fact that the majority of pirates also have the biggest Steam libraries due to the fact that they tend to respect quality product more than the average consumer due to the quantity of products they go through thanks to piracy to weed out the shit from the gold.

The industry, whether gaming or music or movie, are over-saturated.
So over-saturated that it's impossible to give even a 1/10th of each of those industry's artists the chance to be sampled if we had to pay for each and every one.

The over-saturation argument is probably the main and biggest argument going for piracy, especially now that even demos and samples are being corrupted and turned into scam methods for trying products.

Re:That's a lot of money!

[Jane Q. Public]

We've known these things for decades now:

1) Downloading is not "piracy". Piracy is a specific crime related to making and distributing copies, generally for personal gain. Somebody who sells copies of someone else's personal DVD and sells them is a pirate. An uploader might be considered a "pirate", but a downloader is not, because a downloader is not distributing. **

2) Downloading is a copyright violation, not a crime. In scope, it is akin to making a personal copy of a videotape.

3) In most cases, downloading is done when there would not have been an original sale (e.g., movie ticket or DVD) anyway. So the copyright owner didn't "lose" anything.

4) Even if there hypothetically might have been a sale, copyright violation is not "theft". See # 3. It is a completely different area of law.

5) And even if there would have been a sale, all the copyright owner "loses" is the potential profit, which is a tiny fraction of the retail price.

6) Penalties for copyright violation are already unreasonably harsh.

Re:That's a lot of money!

[Jane Q. Public]

** I almost forgot my footnote.

Many torrent programs force you to upload as you download, but not all of them.

If you aren't uploading as you download, you are not "distributing". So you can't be a pirate.

The lesson there is to make sure you have torrent software that can be set to not simultaneously upload.

Transmission for the Mac is one such example. It can be set (with some care) to not upload at all.

Re:That's a lot of money!

[youngone]

You wouldn't steal a handbag.
You wouldn't steal a car.
You wouldn't steal a baby.
You wouldn't shoot a policeman. And then steal his helmet.
You wouldn't go to the toilet in his helmet.
And then send it to the policeman's grieving widow.
And then steal it again!
Downloading films is stealing. If you do it, you will face the consequences.

Re:That's a lot of money!

[thegarbz]

If you aren't uploading as you download, you are not "distributing". So you can't be a pirate.

Interesting thought: if your upload is non-contiguous and your ratio is less than 1, maybe you were distributing material used under fair use?

Trade you ...

[PPH]

... stronger anti-piracy measures for a hard 25 year limit on copyright term. We can't have our law enforcement people chase down every copy of Steamboat Willie.

Only if there was technology

[future assassin]

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.

Copyright Wall of Shame reminder

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Overreach

[aitikin]

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.

Who will advocate in the opposite direction?

[mysidia]

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.

Re:Just hire their own swat team

[NewtonsLaw]

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.

Re:Only for provable loss of sales

[Joce640k]

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.