http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,12589,1343136,00.html

Film industry to sue online pirates

Staff and agencies
Thursday November 4, 2004

The Guardian
The Motion Picture Association of America is expected to announce a tactical shift in its campaign against movie piracy at a press conference later today. The new approach will involve lawsuits targeting individuals suspected of illegally distributing copyrighted films online.

The move heralds a new direction for the MPAA, which has previously concentrated its efforts on eradicating the bootleg DVD market.

It was rumoured that the organisation's former chief, Jack Valenti, had resisted the idea of individual lawsuits during the last months of his tenure. By contrast, new president Dan Glickman is reportedly more enamoured of the tactic.

Individual lawsuits were first pioneered by the music industry as a means of tackling people who make music available on P2P (peer-to-peer) networks. Thus far it has resulted in upwards of 3,000 prosecutions, although critics claim that the prospect of major labels suing individual music fans is bad PR that ends up alienating the public.

MPAA president Dan Glickman is expected to launch the campaign later today at a press conference at the University of California, Los Angeles, attended by studio executives, legislators and film-makers.

The move looks set to have the support of returning US attorney general John Ashcroft. Last month Mr Ashcroft vowed to use the US justice department and FBI in an effort to clamp down on film pirates.

Welcome to the United Police States of America.

And this comes right after the Bush victory???

I'm sure this is just a coincidence...

and it will make as much difference as the RIAA's efforts. In other words. Not a lot. Plus P2P networks will be driven further underground.

the movie industry has seen the problems the music industry has had with these suits, now they want to follow suit?

Movies are not the same as the records. It doesn't cost $20 million to make a record (unless you count the royalties the label will siphon off). The movie studios do not pay the theatres to show a film for free.

I know I would see a lot more movies in the theaters if
1. There weren't little crying kids in R rated films.
2. Most of the movies coming out weren't horrible sequels or remakes of 70's shows.

I don't see where the MPAA is loosing any profit except in the case of pre-releases and knock-off steet vendors. The only impact sharers have is on the mom&pop video rental shops. If I download a shoddy screener of some pre-release I wouldn't have gone to the theater to see the movie anyhow. I may buy the DVD when it comes out though. Conversly, if I were to download some old movie it's more than likely I would have been willing to rent it for $1 - if it were in stock. I still think that Fair Use should cover the ability to share your films if no profit is being made.

Funny, just when the sales of DVD's are picking up...

http://news.com.com/Hollywood+lawsuits+to+target+illegal+file+sharing/2100-1025_3-5438931.html?tag=nefd.top

Good point, Sfolivier. I heard about the lawsuits this morning on my local news station. Check out this chart. A box office bomb tops the charts!
http://www.billboard.com/bb/charts/videos/dvd.jsp

At least the MPAA companies priced their products fairly. You can walk into any department stores and find DVD's for as little as $8, sometimes even less. Yet audio CD's are still having a hard time staying under the $10 mark. And we wonder why the RIAA is hated more. Of course, this news will give us someone else to hate. Boycott-MPAA anyone??

watching cnn.. nothing about this on there.

Was watching fox to see how the republicans were running with this election win.. nothing there either.

I dont endorse piracy. The problem Ive had with the RIAA is

1> Abusing laws or sneaking unconstitutional laws without any thought of consequence to support their archaic business models of ripping off people who work hard to produce the products. The laws are not all about for privated sectors.

2> Abusing their customers without provocation.

3> Shitty products.

4> Hypocritically LIE THEY ARE BEING CHEATING WHEN THEY ARE CHEATING their artists and customers.

OH AND
5> Trying to stop technology from progressing. What a shame!@

There are a few sources out there, Alex. "The MPAA estimates that the U.S. entertainment industry loses about $3.5 billion annually to piracy, not including Internet theft." http://hollywoodreporter.com/thr/film/brief_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000706007

the official release:

http://www.mpaa.org/CurrentReleases/2004_11_04_PressRelease.pdf

I find it hilarious that their governor endorsed hoopla hasnt made it to the news.

oop.. there was just a 20 second mention on cnn right before the commercial break...

You know.. i just realized i havent bought a dvd in years.

I dont trade movies, fansubs keep me quite occupied.

Their stuff just sucks.. it's been bad since ID4 came out and has been sinking below bottom barrel since, thus i dont pay for movies, or even watch the movie channels which come bundled with my cable package.

This is very sad... theyre going to sue those people who theyve managed to lull into mindless spending over the years.

So, how much will sharers have to fork over? If the RIAA can squeeze $3k-15k as payment for their product that has little value, how much will the MPAA seek for just one copy of a multi-million dollar smash?

to quote another aptly titled post to this site ...

"That's why god created canada"

Boo Whoo Boo Whoo for the Mpaa. What they do not tell you is that they have had record sales at the box office for the past 3 years running.

HAHAHHAHAHA.. cnn is trying and failing miserably to build drama on the announcement.

The woman who just spoke about it sounded like a moron.

makes me wanna trade a few movies =)

"taking a page from the music industry.. they..uhh.. theyll be comming after YOU with uhh thier lawyers.. in uhh.. the courtrooms"

you can read her mind.."how do i stretch this meaningless announcement out to cover 25 seconds"

ooh.. theyre going to pay for propaganda posters!.. "look.. were doing what you've already known about for years!.. ph34r our leet stupidity"

http://www.mpaa.org/CurrentReleases/IsThisYou_Ad.pdf

As bad as this sounds, maybe there is a silver lining to it.

The move of the music industry to engage the same tactics of sueing will only increase the publics knowledge of this. It will be coupled with the RIAA when mentioning that this is coming. After a few are sued, the awareness factor will increase. It can't help but draw attention to this practice of sueing customers.

There will come, at some point a backlash from the customers themselves. From awareness that free movies can be had on the net to despising the practice of sueing individuals.

Hollywood has waited to see how the waters were by watching the RIAA in action. It has now decided that greed should rule and it will go after the pennies also.

On a slightly belated scale they will follow the same footsteps as the RIAA and when the RIAA fails so will the MPAA.

One wonders if this might be the push to institute an add on fee to the internet to pay for such d/ling and the MPAA fears it will be left out if it is not active in pursuing illegal downloads.

awehr -- I like the MPAA ad.

"Is This You? Because We don't Have a Fucking Clue."

So, according the ad awehr links to the MPAA is seeking somewhere between $30k-$150k per movie shared? If the MPAA goes around bankrupting people willy-nilly, you can darn well expect a backlash. I read they're planning to launch the attack with 200 cases. So if they target traders with atleast 100 films we can expect to see settlements in $300k-1.5M range? Multiply it by 200 and the MPAA will become public enemy#1 in a heartbeat.

Sorry, Tinker, but there won't be a backlash.

With music, there is a good argument for p2p users, in that there is an abundance of music authorized for sharing by the artists. The issue there is how to tell the difference.

To my knowledge, people aren't releasing free movies on the Internet for publicity, hoping that you buy the rest of the DVD.

And although a great many musicians will support file sharing (for purely selfish reasons), I'd bet you'll be hard-pressed to find a movie crew saying p2p is a great word of mouth advertisement.

gdZiemann, Michael Moore encouraged people to get Farenhet 9/11 on P2P networks.

"With music, there is a good argument for p2p users,"

Although I get your point, it is flawed. There is not really music P2P and movie P2P. There is just P2P, where a variety of material is being shared. Some of it is copyrighted (RIAA songs, MPAA music) and can trigger lawsuits against the people puting it online. The rest is copyright okay to share. It can be independent music that has been released on P2P, but it can also be teasers, public domain movies (if such a thing still exists), homemade material (text, pictures, songs, movies)...

The point is not about the type of material as for any format you can find a mix of copyrighted and free files that are being traded.

I watched "Hack Valenti"...a guy I refer to as the King of the Undead, who is a consultant for CNN...he said Bush is from Texas, and therefore will do the right thing and emnbrace democratics and reach out to be an inclusive leader.

I noticed that no one on CNN was wearing garlic and no mirrors were around him. Hack...one of the children of the night.

surPRISE, SURprize!!

I see that we are back to being "pirates" again.

This particularly sickens me. Does the MPAA honestly expect people to believe that their profits are even dented significantly? What did Shrek 2 make? What about IROBOT? Pirates of the Caribbean? I could go on but what’s the point?

here's to hoping there is a backlash against them and the music industry.

A wise man once said that if two people agree on everything all of the time, one of them is not necessary.

Opposing viewpoints are always a good idea.

I would not, however, trust anything on CNN as it is always slanted against Bush.

I am sure the President Bush will be inclusive for the next 4 years, as long as we all understand that, as the winner, it will be on his terms. Otherwise, what's the point of winning the election?

"The hotheaded studio bosses have been pressuring Valenti for more attacks on consumers; he counseled moderation, so they fired him."

So Valenti is a good guy now? Somewhere a flip has flopped.

"A wise man once said that if two people agree on everything all of the time, one of them is not necessary."

Another wise man also said that it's not polite to jump into discussions with unrelated topics.

More links about the MPAA lawsuits.

http://www.zap2it.com/movies/news/story/0,1259,---23486,00.html

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,118485,00.asp

"Sorry, Tinker, but there won't be a backlash.

With music, there is a good argument for p2p users, in that there is an abundance of music authorized for sharing by the artists. The issue there is how to tell the difference.

To my knowledge, people aren't releasing free movies on the Internet for publicity, hoping that you buy the rest of the DVD."

Nope.. theyre not. but downloading the TV shows which are shared can arguably be equated to taping TV with a vcr, just more space efficient.

Additionally, Bit torrent's development was fueled by anime traders whose traded content is not licensed/copyrighted in the united states, and a large quantity of which never will be.

by the way.. GdZiemann: the point of the outrage is not that "legitimate" uses are being jeopardized, it is that the uses a vast quantity of people WANT to put it to are being berated as "theft".

Keep in mind the VCR was theft too... i predict backlash..

sadly... their movies have been crap for almost a decade now, so my Continued lack of patronage will not register.

my comment on the inclusivity of bush...
a picture is worth a thousand words....
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v210/codewarrior/poppy_i_fooled_em.jpg

Lets look at it this way!!! Back in the 70's people use to tape songs off the radio. When VCR's came out and folks were taping off paid movie channels all hell broke loose which finaly led to the sony/betamax decision. Lets hope all hell breaks loose this time and that the DMCA act will get the ax.

The majority of the p2p movie downloads are by true fans of the movie who at some point WILL go to the movie theatre and/or rent/buy the DVD. There really is NOT much difference between online song swapping and movie swapping. Either still only helps to promote the product.

(sorry to have had to disagree with ya George!)

I don't demand unanimous support.

But what about this one? Is this acceptable behavior or is it the same as swapping?
http://media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1344191,00.html

Neither do I. (It only takes %51 to have a "mandate"... and much less than that back in 2000!)

the MPAA shows concession stand workers in its respect copyrights commercials. They workers or theatres dont share in profit from the movie so me buying a ticket doesnt matter to them.

They just care if i get snacks and i with the price of movies going up all the time people usually just pass on those anyways.

So maybe when the movie industry gives a damn about the workers only then will i listen to what they have to say.

I don't see how people downloading a low quality bootleg will hurt anyway. It's not like MP3's where ppl are downloading tracks that sound close to a CD quality.

If I want to buy a car I take it for a test drive.
clothes, I try on at the store to see if they fit.
if I want to buy a DVD or go to the theatre I'd like to preview it first. The entertainment industry is one of the few that doesn't allow one to try out the product or return it if it's bad. The Hulk is a prime example. I'm a movie buff and have a big collection. usually I rent the movie at a video store before deciding to buy. but I won't buy sight unseen.

It's just a ploy to try and drive people away from p2p in much the same way the RIAA did so they can get your attention to try a so called legal movie download site, think apple(ipod)music download service.
The MPAA probably will let some people roll out a (imovie) of a sort then there will be several of them all priced the same just like the .99 cent downloads but first they gotta sue a bunch of people to get what I call the sheeps attention sheeps=people.

By the way sharing is a natural part of life big corps. can't handle that I believe you should have a right to do whatever you want to do with a product as long as you don't make a profit off of it simple as that now if they sue people who turn a profit be it a movie or music then sue away. they can't see they are blind in the sense p2p helps sell.

"\It's just a ploy to try and drive people away from p2p in much the same way the RIAA did so they can get your attention to try a so called legal movie download site"

let me guess.. all the content will be in crappy real media or even worse WMV (worthless media video), the resolution will be 100X300 pixels, and youll have to pay extra if you want to watch more than 5 minutes at a time..

HEHEHE

Well, now that the MPAA is interested in joining the RIAA on this battleground, maybe the push for the compulsary license thingy will gain momentum...

(ONCE AGAIN, I will say to you all... PLEASE put COPYRIGHT REFORM in front of any VC Licence!)

(It is in EVERYONE'S best interest!)

COPYRIGHT REFORM FIRST!

(THEN, we talk Compulsary License!)

...If not, then be DOOMED to the same sorta thing that happened with radio!

Well, the good thing is, Asscroft seems to be on the way out, for "personal" reasons. Let's all pray his successor is a dolt who can't zip his fly.

I just don't get why the MPAA wants to sue people. Online movie downloading isn't as big as music downloading, mostly because you absolutely have to have a high speed connection to download a movie. Unless you want to spend upwards of a month downloading a movie.

Case in point: My ex-girlfriend wanted to download Return of the King, despite already seeing it three times in the theater (she turned out to be a huge LOTR fan) so I started it for her last time I was up at her house. She does have DSL, but apparently whoever was sharing it didn't and it took about a week of continuous downloading to get it on her computer, only to not be able to view it. By the time I figured something out from where I'm at, the movie was out on DVD anyway.

And before that, I had downloaded Attack of the Clones for her and the sound was all screwed up at the beginning.

In other words, waste of time. You're better off going to see it in the theater, or renting/buying it.

WELL THEY HAVE MADE A MISTAKE
like the riaa they will fail
why make an enemy out of the consumer
this will never work.
noone will even show up to court andf noone will even get arrested as long as they arent making a profit
they are making the same stupid mistake as riaa and they will pay for it
the moment i see lawsuits thats when it ends
if they sue
i boycott
riaa legal funds are almost bankrupt
themovie industry wont be too long behind
noone likes big media anyway and it willdestroy them to file lawsuits
what idioiots these rich gredy fucks never learn

I have d/led movies...but I've already seen em. movies are way different then music. i need that big theater sound..and screen. the movie industry is not losing ticket sales to d/ling. people are still gonna but dvd's as well.

"public domain movies "

Does such a thing even exist? I doubt it highly. If some do exist, what are they? Even Mickey Mouse is 76 years old, yet his "copyright" hasn't yet expired.

http://www.characterproducts.com/info/character_histories/mickey_minnie_doorway.htm

Funny how the last paragraph truly summarizes what Mickey's character truly represents.... a disclaimer to prevent lawsuits.

"DISCLAIMER: Mickey Mouse and all related characters and elements are the rightful property of The Walt Disney Company."

The way copyright laws have been expanded and extended, copyright holders might as well claim "in perpetuity", for all practical purposes.

"It's not like MP3's where ppl are downloading tracks that sound close to a CD quality."

A gentle reminder that audio quality has already passed the average consumer's ability to hear the difference. This bodes ill for any further technological development in the world of music.

If an mp3 is acceptable, why does the world need SACD or DVD Audio? If listening to music on your cell phone is the height of cool, why even bother with stereo any more?

Let's just go back to mono recordings. It's the wave of the future. It's conservative. It's what God wants.

After the RIAA started the first law suit not only I started a boycott but I also did the following:
I ripped all the CDs that I bought from the RIAA members and loaded it into a machine that I built specially for this with a 250GB HD. I keep this machine night and day on Internet. It is running BT Emule, Mute, Winnie, and Kazaa lite and limewire and every thing is shared. If you see a user or server called Major treat that might be this machine. They said that they sue people having 1000 files? Well what about over 17000? Curiously the firewall neither recorded any pinging by the RIAA Mafia.

Each time the RIAA sue 700 peoples I go to the local music store and rend un-salable 70 CD from RIAA members.

IF the MPAA sue their customer I will boycott the MPAA, will no longer buy DVD or go to the Movie Theater.

I will rip my entire collection of DVD, start downloading more. Then I will add a 1000GB HD to my server to store all of that.

Each time they sue 700 peoples I will go to the movie stores and make un-salable 70 DVDs.

I am also contemplating to use web storm to try to keep down the RIAA downloading services.

Also I want to issue this warning. Since I am leaving near by the MPAA HeadQuarter watch your back president Dan Glickman! I am not gentle!

Please do like me. This is a war guys!

I think there are real technical barriers to the MPAA successfully suing movie downloaders. For instance, it is trival for the RIAA's "snoops" to download an entire song from somebody, but nearly impossible to get an entire movie. Movies typically take days or hours to complete, and then in apps like bittorrent and Edonkey you only get a chunk from this guy, and a chuck from that guy. Are they going to sue someone based on downloading 5% of a film? There is no legal way to verify that that file listed on someone's computer is the whole movie file, without downloading it in its entirety.

'Course, this is just an imtimidation tactic, and most people will settle out of fear. Plus, who has 100 movies stored on their HD? That's 70 gigs minimum of nothing but movies!

Maybe they should eliminate the idiot "region codes" so I could buy a DVD here in Denmark and have it play in my US player when I get home.

Or I could just pirate the DVD instead of buying it and then I know it will play.

** . . . most people will settle out of fear.** -- MasterofChaos

Y'all's remember my point: that if these "most people" can't (or won't) stand up to these Goliaths, how in the world will they stand up to, say, Al Qaeda or Hezbollah or Hamas if we were hit once again in a 9-11 or Madrid-style attack? In a way, I can see why Bin Laden thought the American people would be so intimidated by his message from last week that they'd vote for Kerry instead of Bush (that is, because they're easily intimidated by the RIAA, apparently). And thus does the socialist cancer that had infected the RIAA, the cancer of confiscatory / forced redistribution of wealth, spread to the MPAA. To go after the makers and distributors of illegal product, the ones you see daily on the street, is one thing, one which even people here might advocate; but the "little guy" who can barely make ends meet thanks to job exporting and the driving down of wages . . . who, for the most part, has been raised, almost without question, to be "weak-willed" and "weak-minded" before any authority figure or type . . . you can fill out the rest . . .

But I also come back to another point, raised by a famous radio talk show host, that besides the regurgitations of old movies (think "Alfie") or TV shows, there's the matter of people no longer going to the movies because of the politics of the actors who appear in certain films; that, besides Hollywood's relentless "push-the-envelope" mentality in terms of content.

And then there's this other point (a variation, from what I recall, of what 'gdZiemann' asked in the past about people who seek out RIAA "crack-ho" music despite that chicken outfit's harmful-to-consumers agenda): Why would anybody be insane enough to have WHOLE MOVIES from any MPAA member (in their computers or elsewhere), given what THAT group is now pursuing?

"Y'all's remember my point: that if these "most people" can't (or won't) stand up to these Goliaths, how in the world will they stand up to, say, Al Qaeda or Hezbollah or Hamas if we were hit once again in a 9-11 or Madrid-style attack?"

I remember a friend of mine speaking on this issue in an anecdote which seems to typpify the american mentality.

There was a flash flood in her area of town, and she noticed a bunch of teens playing near a dangerously flooded creek. She told them there was debris and rapids and they could be swept away and killed. They didnt care. She tried to appeal to their duty to keep safe for their families. They didnt care. Finally, she threatened to sue them for trespassing, among other things... they cared about that.

It is a strange world we live in when lawsuits are considered worse than death.

If they eliminate the region code, nyer, then they'd also have to come up with a global standard TV aspect ratio. Denmark, as well as the most of the rest of the world use PAL while the US, Canada and Japan all use the NTSC format. In other words, a DVD from Denmark won't work on a US TV. Unless, of course, there's a device out there that allows it, but, chances are, it violates the DMCA's "anti-circumvention" rule.

NiceGuy: that is easy.

Have you ever moded an xbox?

My moded xbox has this neat thing called a "mode switcher".

it turns pal into ntsc, and vice versa.

that is not a barrier which prevents elimination of region codes..

Alex, (off topic) since you're up on all this technical stuff, what do you know about 80386 processors being used in voting machines? Any validity to what the poster said at this site? http://www.blackboxvoting.com/

the post seems plausible.

a glitch in any part of the software either on the voting machine or in the firmware which governs the cartidge could have caused an overrun or out of bounds error which overwrote crucial instructions and caused it to say.. add two or 3 instead of one for each time someone voted.

it happening in that specific way is unlikely, but considering the millions of votes cast around the country on the same machine using the same code, it is possible a few thousand stumbled across the bug.

part of the reason why i really dont want to trust software for something of that level of importance.

That 80386 processor...Is that what is commonly referred to as a "386"? The predecessor of the "486" and Pentium 1?
That's what they're using?

According to Air America, blackboxvoting.org is the right organization (.com seems to be a splinter group)

There is a disclaimer that reads: The Black Box Voting Project, Plan Nine Publishing and David Allen are no longer affiliated with Bev Harris, nor she with us.
Thanks. I'll check out the other site.

Randi Rhodes on Air America is telling people to send a $1 to Bev Harris at the .org site.

What is puzzling is that so many exit polls were wrong.

Here's a possible explanation: "The most obvious mistake seems to have been an overly large sampling of women voters, particularly early in the day. In the exit polling NEP (National Election Pool) released at 1 p.m. ET on the day of the election, of the 5,000 voters who had been interviewed, 59 percent were women. Three hours later, of the 8,349 voters who were interviewed, 58 percent were women. In both of these statistical snapshots, Kerry was winning the election, according to NEP."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6408569/site/newsweek/

IF the MPAA sue their customer I will boycott the MPAA, will no longer buy DVD or go to the Movie Theater.

I will rip my entire collection of DVD, start downloading more. Then I will add a 1000GB HD to my server to store all of that.

Each time they sue 700 peoples I will go to the movie stores and make un-salable 70 DVDs.

I am also contemplating to use web storm to try to keep down the RIAA downloading services.

Also I want to issue this warning. Since I am leaving near by the MPAA HeadQuarter watch your back president Dan Glickman! I am not gentle!

Please do like me. This is a war guys!

oh yea
its war allright
they wanna make us consumers their enemy
then its on.
heres a rule for entertainment

thast applied since time immemorial
never i mean NEVER make an enemy out of your consumer
like the riaa they will suffer
and as much as i like movies
i wont support a media that hurts its own income by suing its own customers frivilously
movieswere making money leaving people alone
now
its gonna hurt them more suing people than embracing fair use
i hope they get hurt for trying this

i really hoped that movie companies wiould learn from riaa.s mistakes
apparently
nope
they didnt so now its war

dubbsakk, you made some good points in your post.

And you usually do have some good strong points in all your posts, BTW.

I must admit, it hurts me to think that Tom Cruise might have to work for a couple of million less one day due to slackers who file-share -- NOT.

With the normal career activity.. i understand maybe 2.5-3 mil a film..

but not 5, 10, 20, or 30 mil.

it's called trimming the fat.. you pay actors less.. they still live well, but they dont have solid gold mclarens.. the rest of us have more value for our money, and more money to spend elsewhere.

Monkey see, monkey do.

At least the MPAA actually puts out a decent product more than 1% of the time. At least they're more reasonably priced than music..

I was wondering why they were taking so long.

The MPAAs product isn't that good - for the last decade or so, there has been a more more emphesis on big budgets, special effects and huge star actors than on writing a good story and script. They produce a good movie occasionally, of course. But now they are only temporary hits, no more of those classics that remain popular for decades.

What? Shrek I & II don't stand a chance to last 20 years? Oh, no!
[heartbroken sigh]

Or The Lion King either?
Tarnation! WHAT is this world coming to?