MPAA: Do as I say, not as I do...

[NetRyder]

This should win the "Irony of the Year" award.

Apparently, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has been accused of unauthorized movie copying and distribution. The Director of the film in question claims that copies were made and distributed to MPAA employees without his permission.

According to Mark Lemley, a professor at the Stanford Law School, the MPAA may have been within its rights to make copies of the film. Given that the MPAA's intent isn't financial gain and that the whole situation may rise above the level of trading barbs through the media into legal action, making a copy may be justified.​

Huh? So the folks who rip DVDs and distribute them over BitTorrent aren't breaking the law? After all, their intent isn't financial gain either, right?

Besides, the MPAA's site empirically states - "manufacturing, selling, distributing or making copies of motion pictures without the consent of the copyright owner is illegal." Well, didn't they just make copies and distribute them without the consent of the copyright owner?

I'm no lawyer, but the justifications and excuses just aren't making any sense to me.

 

[Geffy]

Interesting

 

[mlakrid]

Interesting

That is putting it moderately...
regardless of how they want to spin it, it IS illegal....

 

[Dublex]

cool, maybe MPAA can sue itself and bring itself to court.

 

[Mastershakes]

According to Mark Lemley, a professor at the Stanford Law School, the MPAA may have been within its rights to make copies of the film. Given that the MPAA's intent isn't financial gain and that the whole situation may rise above the level of trading barbs through the media into legal action, making a copy may be justified.​

Huh? So the folks who rip DVDs and distribute them over BitTorrent aren't breaking the law? After all, their intent isn't financial gain either, right?

That is correct. Continue burning.

 

[Grandmaster]

The hypocrisy coming from all these companies that are so paranoid about their copyrighted material is hilarious.

 

[mooo]

I hope the director takes this to court and makes them look like total tools. The MPAA is ranked up there with the RIAA in my book. Movie idea's are just so boring, action movies (i watched underworld evo.) are just kind of lame now. They care about the Special Effect and not the actual movie. This won't make them quit crying about "illegal" copies but maybe it will shut them up for a while till its all over

 

[Son Goku]

Indeed:

They, along with the RIAA lobby for these laws, as well as the continual extention of copyrights, which is way in excess of the time placed upon them in our fore father's day (before something falls into fair use), and very much counter to the intention of a copyright being an incentive to create for a limited period of time. The limits get extended, the DMCA and other bills such as the SSSCA get proposed to Congress, and the balance between fair use vs. the copy right gets shifted so far towards copy right, as to almost make fair use rights non-existent (despite the laws wrt it still being technically, on the books...)

Enough so, that videos like this get created The original video is gone (which shows things like Mickey Mouse, as a King Kong sized mouse that's stomping on the average consumer and stuff), but the sound track is still present

http://www.eff.org/IP/SSSCA_CBDTPA/20020528_eff_tinseltown_club.mp3

Then they turn around and file copious law suites (the mass filings drawing critisism from judges themselves that finally tell them they can't mass file them for the entire world, in their court room alone, due to jurisdictional boundaries) against world + dog, for which even a corpse, of someone's grandmother who didn't even know how to turn a computer on, is not immune. Their craze for lawsuites, makes the whole time that Rambus got called out for their litigous nature, look like child's play by comparison.

Then the recording industry tries filing law suites against citizens of other countries, and to have them dragged before US courts despite what the law might say in their own respective country. The Russian who was drilled:

"Did you know you were violating US law, or did you just not care"

when he was a Russian, working for a Russian firm in his endevor, had not stepped foot inside US borders, and no way fell under the jurisdiction of US law, was laughable at best...

Then they try to lord it over the tech industry, where when even Intel themselves mentions the harm it could bring to their own business if the computer is reduced to little more then a glorified video cassette recorder, Sen. Hollings (namely the RIAA's pet lap dog of a Senator), blasts the Intel rep and suggests "you're either with us, or you're with the crimminals. We're not here to discuss this, but to give you time to develop technology..."

And then they mess around with copy protected CDs, suggestions of blowing out people's sound equipment, apperently Blu Ray players might self destruct by some accounts if they have a hint of suggestion that the disk might have been tampered with (oh yes, this is the same company that put root kits on people's computers), "cactus datashield", and just about everything else. Hell, there were even musicians themselves who spoke out against some of this, also wanting to know why she couldn't listen to some CDs in her car, given that many auto manufacturers use DVD players for automotive CD players...

And then the recording industry turns around and does this. I guess hypocrite can be added to the long list of words that can be used to describe these moguls, and arguably "exploitive cartel" who can fix prices and just about everything else. Along with words that can be applied for Sony's having suruptisciously installed root kits on people's comps in the name of preventing what they do themselves...

Yup, that's all folks...

 

[Xie]

Yeah, I always found it hard to believe that nobody in any of these orgainizations (MPAA/RIAA/ect.), ever copied a disc or ripped a DVD to HD for viewing on a trip or something.