What the MPAA and RIAA Want Us To Believe (and FEAR)

The MPAA and the RIAA have been very busy making sure they lock up all those file sharers out there (and as a result abolish one of the most efficient file sharing platforms out there... P2P or "peer to peer").

Before we get started, we should be clear about one thing... these institutions want to change copyright law in their favor. It's not about dealing with the low level of "piracy" that exists now. It's about having an iron clad hold on everything they own so that we, as consumers, no longer buy a copy of a song or movie... we just pay them for the privilege of borrowing it.

And, just for the record, I am not a "pirate". I own over 800 store bought DVDs. But I also believe sharing is the way cultures grow and learn. Think of a world without libraries or one where a friend can't loan you a recording of last night's Lost when you missed it. Sure you could watch it on ABC's flash site, but that site isn't there for your convenience. It's there to make sure ABC makes every possible dime it can.

Anyway... Wired has been keeping tabs on the MPAA's overtures to hold on to their intellectual property claiming that "piracy costs them billions of dollars in lost revenue each year". Oddly enough, though, the public has never seen any actual proof of this. We just have their litigation happy word for it.

If there is proof that I'm unaware of, please point it out to me (Threat Level has a nice post about how these $ estimates are "turkey"). In the meantime, here's where things stand.

(excerpts from Wired's Threat Level blog by David Kravets - click HERE for full article)

The Copyright Act says a rights holder has the exclusive right "to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending."

On Tuesday, in a lengthy telephone interview with Threat Level, two of the leading lawyers for the Motion Picture Association of America defined the Copyright Act as it applies to peer-to-peer file sharing networks: No actual transfer of the work is required, they said.

"You don't have to prove actual distribution. You need to prove there's works in the share folder, and that is distribution," said Joseph Geisman, MPAA's chief intellectual property attorney, as he described the so-called "making available" concept.

A host of digital rights groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a group of professors, labeled such an assertion as attempted copyright infringement, not covered under the Copyright Act. They claim infringement occurs only when there is actual proof of distribution -- that somebody else made downloads of a defendant's share folder.

The MPAA counters, saying that was never Congress' intent.

"If the other side is right," Goeckner said, "it's kind of open season on copyrighted works on the internet."

Related stories are linked below:

MPAA Says No Proof Needed in P2P Copyright Infringement Lawsuits

Senate Introduces IP Reform Bill Bolstering Enforcement

RIAA, MPAA Converging on Political Conventions

Studios Continue Getting Piracy Wrong?

By now many of you have heard how The Dark Knight is shattering box office records. Almost every news story is about how much money Warner Bros. is raking in.

No story that I've seen has been about film piracy... until today.

One of the reasons I believe film piracy to be one of the most overblown "threats" out there (next to any and all warnings from Neo-Cons) is this...

...when a film tanks at the box office it was piracy that had a hand in hobbling it...

... if a film is a blockbuster, no one moans about piracy getting in the way of an even bigger opening weekend.

This must mean that piracy is only a problem for films with poor performances. At least that's what it seems to me.

Yet, Warner Bros. took extra measures to make sure piracy didn't hinder Batman.

"The film reels were delivered in staggered shipments so that a complete version was not available in theaters until the last moment.... The strategy, according to the (Los Angeles) Times, kept any print of The Dark Knight off the internet for 30 hours -- enough time to allow it to break box-office records in its first weekend."

Umm, really? Here's another misconception about film piracy. People who are going to download a film from the internet, a process that could take up to 24 hours depending upon your connection, WERE NEVER GOING TO THE THEATER IN THE FIRST PLACE. A 30 hour delay is only going to put off their downloading... not make them pony up to see it in the theater.

Dark Knight was an event film. Sure there are illegal copies on line and on poor quality Hong Kong DVDs, but I'm willing to bet these measures by WB didn't hinder these illegal transactions. Nor would they have effected Dark Knight's bottom line in any significant way. Dark Knight made all the money it was supposed to and rightfully so (It's a kick ass film!).

Still, I guess if you publicly behave like there's a threat... then the threat must be real.