http://www.cinemablend.com/dvdnews/The-MPAA-Won-t-Let-You-Watch-DVDs-On-Your-iPod-1819.html

Quote :

"The MPAA Won't Let You Watch DVDs On Your iPod - DVD News By Josh Tyler: 2006-11-28 If you buy a DVD legally, you should be able to do anything you want with it right? Wrong. The guys over at The Movie Blog have the latest on the MPAA’s copyright crusade against DVD owners, and they’ve won… which means you lose. This week, the US Library of Congress rejected a petition to allow US iPod owners to copy movies that they own on to their iPod or other such similar video devices. That’s right folks, it is illegal for you to watch a movie from your DVD library on your iPod. This is utter madness. The MPAA’s stance is that DVD copying and ripping if any kind hurts the industry, and they’re out to do everything within their power to stop their industry’s most ardent supporters from enjoying their legally purchased products to the fullest in their home. They want your money, but only if you watch what they want you to watch in the way they’ve approved. I’m with Campea over at TMB. They’re fools. It’s this kind of idiot mentality that’s killing the movie industry. They whine and bitch about piracy, but it’s completely retarded, greedy thinking like this that’s doing it. Not pirates in Taiwan. They’re not just missing out on a HUGE and massively growing market, they’re now in the business of legislating how and where people watch movies which they’ve paid for. GET OUT OF MY HOME. The MPAA has no right to be there. If I’ve paid their blood money to buy the DVD when I could have just as easily downloaded illegally for free, then I should be able to do any damn thing I want with it. By telling people they can’t, they’re only encouraging them to go out and grab pirated copies. The petition to reverse this dumbass legal red tape came from an organization called the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Here’s their argument against what the MPAA’s claims: “The empirical evidence proves just the opposite. During the previous exemption period, DVD sales and profitability continued to grow at an astonishing pace. In fact, DVD sales have proven to be more profitable for motion picture studios in recent years than the formats they replaced, even at a time when DVD ripping software has been popular. In addition, major motion picture studios have continued to release new DVD titles in ever-increasing numbers.” But the MPAA has clout, and money, and no one is listening. This is a dark day for DVD. Now iPod owners will only be able to watch movies they purchase from the iPod store, which means if you buy a DVD and you want to watch it on your iPod, you’ll have to buy it twice. Otherwise, you can only watch it on your MPAA approved DVD player or laptop computer. "

12/2/2006 2:50:57 AM

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,72214-0.html?tw=rss.index

Quote :

"MPAA Kills Anti-Pretexting Bill By Ryan Singel| Also by this reporter 02:00 AM Dec, 01, 2006 A tough California bill that would have prohibited companies and individuals from using deceptive "pretexting" ruses to steal private information about consumers was killed after determined lobbying by the motion picture industry, Wired News has learned The bill, SB1666, was written by state Sen. Debra Bowen, and would have barred investigators from making "false, fictitious or fraudulent" statements or representations to obtain private information about an individual, including telephone calling records, Social Security numbers and financial information. Victims would have had the right to sue for damages. The bill won approval in three committees and sailed through the state Senate with a 30-0 vote. Then, according to Lenny Goldberg, a lobbyist for the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, the measure encountered unexpected, last-minute resistance from the Motion Picture Association of America. "The MPAA has a tremendous amount of clout and they told legislators, 'We need to pose as someone other than who we are to stop illegal downloading,'" Goldberg said. Consequently, when the bill hit the assembly floor Aug. 23, it was voted down 33-27, just days before revelations about Hewlett-Packard's use of pretexting to spy on journalists and board members put the practice in the national spotlight. Legislature records confirm that the MPAA's paid lobbyists worked on the measure. An aide to Bowen, who was forced out of the legislature by term limits and was elected Secretary of State, said the MPAA made its displeasure with the bill clear to lawmakers. "The MPAA told some members the bill would interfere with piracy investigations," the aide said. The association "doesn't want to hamstring investigators." The MPAA declined to comment for this story. California went on to pass a much more narrow bill that bans the use of deceit to obtain telephone calling records, and nothing else. A similarly tailored bill languished in Congress this year, despite high-profile congressional grillings of senior HP employees. Sean Walsh, past president of the Califonia Association of Licensed Investigators and an investigator for 27 years, said his group opposed SB1666 because it was too vague and would have tied the hands of investigators looking into insurance fraud, child support cases and missing children. "There's a public reason and benefit for some of this information to be available to legitimate licensed investigators," Walsh said. "Should it be available to everyone out there? Probably not. There are people that have legitimate need for getting this information in terms of an investigation, enforcing a court order and helping to return a child. Those are all very legitimate reasons and by excluding that you do grave disservice to the average citizen and to large corporations." Walsh also said groups like the MPAA and the Recording Industry Association of America hire investigators who use pretexting to ferret out copyright infringers, such as vendors on the street who are selling bootleg copies of CDs or DVDs. In that case, investigators may use some ruse to find out where the discs originated. (Records do not indicate that the RIAA had a position on the bill.) Ira Rothken, a prominent technology lawyer defending download search engine TorrentSpy against a movie industry copyright suit, says he didn't know about the lobbying, but can guess why the MPAA got involved. Rothken is suing (.pdf) the MPAA for allegedly paying a hacker $15,000 to hack into TorrentSpy's e-mail accounts. "It doesn't surprise me that the MPAA would be against bills that protect privacy, and the MPAA has shown that they are willing to pay lots of money to intrude on privacy," Rothken said. "I do think there needs to be better laws in place that would deter such conduct and think that it would probably be useful if our elected officials would not be intimidated by the MPAA when trying to pass laws to protect privacy." For his part, private investigator Walsh, whose current firm specializes in protecting the privacy of corporate clients, said he hopes lawmakers in 2007 take their time. "Everyone wants a quick fix, but they don't see the ripple effect until much later," Walsh said. "Our organization has been successful at educating legislators by saying, 'Wait a minute, but look at how it effects X, Y and Z.' They have to see those tangents so that if they are going to go ahead and pass legislation, they do it in a responsible and educated way.""

12/2/2006 2:54:52 AM

go to hell MPAA

when you get there, say hi to RIAA for me.....

12/2/2006 8:20:00 AM

[Edited on December 2, 2006 at 11:22 AM. Reason : pic]

12/2/2006 11:20:29 AM

that first one is batshit crazy

12/2/2006 5:26:50 PM

I don't believe it.

12/3/2006 8:13:49 PM

what a bunch of greedy-ass cunts

12/3/2006 8:17:36 PM

this is not madness, if you want to get mad at someone blame all the people who steal stuff as soon as they're presented with an easy opportunity to, they are just protecting their investment.

12/3/2006 8:30:42 PM

i was more appaled at the 2nd one when i heard it earlier this week.
First of all, i've been curious about the legality of pretexting ever since the HP thing broke a couple months ago. I would have thought that pretexting is basically fraud or identity theft to begin with, and therefore illegal, but obviously it's not. But the fact that the MPAA comes out and flatly says that "we sometimes need to lie about who we are to stop illegal downloading" is bullshit. crazy...

12/3/2006 8:33:40 PM

Quote :

"this is not madness, if you want to get mad at someone blame all the people who steal stuff as soon as they're presented with an easy opportunity to, they are just protecting their investment. are too lazy to vote out legislators and others who allow the MPAA to act like a goddamn government agency."

12/3/2006 8:34:03 PM

actually i kind of agree with ya'll now, instead of telling people you can use technology or you cant share with your friends, if they're gonna spend millions of $$ to make and produce a DVD then charge alot of $$ for each dvd then people can do with them what ever they want. but ban mainstream downloads from businesses

12/3/2006 8:51:39 PM

The intellectual property bubble will soon burst.....

Be prepared......

[Edited on December 4, 2006 at 8:24 AM. Reason : iwtbf]

12/4/2006 8:23:47 AM

oooh...how grand will it be if Nancy Pelosi decides this MPAA business falls under her "Day One: Put new rules in place to "break the link between lobbyists and legislation.""

12/4/2006 11:22:39 AM

i'm not holding my breath

12/4/2006 11:44:21 AM

This one is worse, the MPAA also wants to outlaw tvs over 29" unless registered with them.

Quote :

"Los Angeles , CA - The MPAA is lobbying congress to push through a new bill that would make unauthorized home theaters illegal. The group feels that all theaters should be sanctioned, whether they be commercial settings or at home. MPAA head Dan Glickman says this needs to be regulated before things start getting too far out of control, "We didn't act early enough with the online sharing of our copyrighted content. This time we're not making the same mistake. We have a right to know what's showing in a theater." The bill would require that any hardware manufactured in the future contain technology that tells the MPAA directly of what is being shown and specific details on the audience. The data would be gathered using various motion sensors and biometric technology. The MPAA defines a home theater as any home with a television larger than 29" with stereo sound and at least two comfortable chairs, couch, or futon. Anyone with a home theater would need to pay a $50 registration fee with the MPAA or face fines up to $500,000 per movie shown. "

12/4/2006 2:37:29 PM

That is ridiclous. Mutiny in America would ensue before that happened.

What a douche move by them to even suggest it.

12/4/2006 2:40:48 PM

Quote :

""Just because you buy a DVD to watch at home doesn't give you the right to invite friends over to watch it too. That's a violation of copyright and denies us the revenue that would be generated from DVD sales to your friends," said Glickman. "Ideally we expect each viewer to have their own copy of the DVD, but we realize that isn't always feasible. The registration fee is a fair compromise."

http://www.bbspot.com/News/2006/11/home-theater-regulations.html

What gets me is they suggest this is a fair compromise. As if the movie industry isn't already making large sums of money. Can you imagine the scneario of inviting friends over to watch a movie but making sure they brought $5 for a ticket

12/4/2006 2:53:34 PM

my friend sent me that link earlier and informed me that bbspot was like a techie version of "the onion"

12/4/2006 2:56:32 PM

Yeah, I was about to say, go to the home page. It's a joke site.

12/4/2006 2:57:35 PM

okay, phew. well jokes on me then

but that does make me feel better.

12/4/2006 3:20:52 PM

it got me too. it honestly doesn't seem that far off from something they might try.

12/4/2006 3:21:40 PM

Damn, lol, Those sites need to warn people more readily that they are lying.

Quote :

"BBspot is a satirical news and comedy source and meant to be funny. If you are easily offended, gullible or don't have a sense of humor we suggest you go elsewhere."

This is their warning...in like 0.05 pt font at the bottom.

12/4/2006 3:24:20 PM

for those of you who thought the BBSpot article was real, join the crowd here - http://www.bbspot.com/News/2006/11/mailbag_20061129.html
every week Brian Briggs, the "BB" of BBSpot, posts emails he gets from people who thinks his stories are real.
an interesting aspect of which stories are believed, though, is that it is now not entirely unreasonable that the MPAA would try to do something like this.....

12/4/2006 4:46:22 PM

Somewhat related but:

Quote :

"RIAA to Launch P2PLawsuits.com Topic: News Among other things, the recently leaked letter from the RIAA to ISPs revealed that the RIAA plans on launching a "website with information about the copyright lawsuits that should facilitate early settlement," to be located at P2PLawsuits.com, which the RIAA's Jonathan Lamy registered on January 23, 2007. Ironically, lots of the Google ads on the RIAA's free parking page (courtesy of GoDaddy) are for malware-laden P2P file sharing clients:"

http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/02/riaa_to_launch_.html

2/13/2007 9:53:58 PM