mpaa – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Stories filed under: "mpaa"

Awesome Stuff: Let's Bore The Censors

from the rate-this dept

Film ratings and content warnings seem like a perfectly harmless and sensible idea in theory, but in practice they become a tool of censorship and industry protectionism. The UK has its own issues in this regard that are not unlike the ones we see in the US, and one filmmaker has come up with an amusing idea to fight back: crowdfunding a long and uneventful film of paint drying, to at least bore the censors to tears.

The British Board of Film Classification (formerly known as, yes, the British Board of Film Censors) is the UK equivalent of CARA, the film-rating portion of the MPAA. Both were formed by the industry to avoid government-administered content regulations, but where the MPAA’s ratings stranglehold on the industry is based almost entirely on an economic monopoly, the BBFC’s is backed up by ratings requirements in UK law. Where the MPAA can’t actually ban films (instead forcing them to choose self-censorship or economic suicide), the BBFC can.

But the BBFC has one weakness, of sorts: it has to watch the films, even if it decides not to let anyone else do so. In fact, it seems to be quite proud of its commitment to watching every minute of footage that is submitted for classification. This gave Charlie Lyne, a London filmmaker and critic, an idea for how to take a dig at the BBFC while also sparking conversation around this under-discussed issue: force the censors to watch a very long, very boring, very pointless film of paint drying.

One of the most interesting things that this stunt highlights is the pricing system, whereby filmmakers must pay a per-minute fee for work they submit to the board — a fee that is trivial for a big studio production, but not so much for an indie working with a shoestring budget. Of course, in this case, Kickstarter neatly takes care of that problem: the final film will be scaled in length to the amount raised, with the crowdfunded cash paying the per-minute fee. Lyne has 14 hours of footage ready to go, which he figured would be plenty (it would cost a little over £6000 to get all that reviewed), but he’s prepared to shoot more. And it looks like he might have to, since the campaign is past the halfway mark of using up all that drying paint. If it hits 13 hours, it’ll snag a record too, becoming the longest film ever reviewed by the board.

A fan has even set up a website where you can track the length of the film based on the money raised so far. With 24 days still to go in the campaign, it looks like the BBFC is going to be staring at that paint for a very long time. Of course, it’s easy to wonder if they actually will, but at least they confirmed to Mashable that they do watch every minute of submitted footage — plus, it’s always possible someone slipped some objectionable content in at hour 7, right? What choice do they have?

So if you’d like to bore some censors and help spark conversation around the issue of movie ratings — which many people just assume are a system that works reasonably and fairly in the background, rather than a powerful and determining factor in the movie industry — head on over to the Kickstarter page and contribute a minute or two to this groundbreaking crowdfunded film.

Filed Under: awesome stuff, bbfc, censorship, mpaa, uk

MPAA Strategized On How To 'Tell The Positive Side' Of Internet Censorship

from the incredible dept

Back in December, when the Sony emails first leaked, we wrote a detailed post about the bizarre views of the MPAA on site blocking, in that it was absolutely obsessed with putting site blocking in place while admitting it didn’t understand the technical issues. That was based on the reporting done by some reporters who had seen a few of the emails. Now that Wikileaks has released the entire trove, we can discover some more details, like the fact that part of the MPAA’s plan was to figure out how to create pro-censorship propaganda. It really is incredible, but that’s a bulletpoint in an email from the MPAA’s top lawyer, Steven Fabrizio, about part of the strategy at a “site blocking confab” the major studios held last fall:

Outreach to academics, think tanks and other third parties to foster the publication of research papers, white papers and other articles that tell the positive story of site blocking: e.g., it is commonplace around the world and working smoothly; it has not broken the internet; it is not incompatible with DNSSEC; it is effective; legitimate sites/content have not been blocked; etc.

Think about that for a second. The MPAA, which likes to declare itself one of the foremost defenders of free speech, was literally conspiring on how to create propaganda in favor of censorship, pointing to countries that already censor the web as “good examples” to follow. You’d think they would have learned from the time Bono tried to use China’s censorship as an example of how to deal with copyright infringement what a ridiculous idea this is.

Filed Under: censorship, mpaa, positive side, propaganda, site blocking
Companies: mpaa

HuffPo Columnist: I Infringe, So All Broadband Users Must Pay A New Piracy Tax

from the here-we-go-again dept

Fri, Feb 21st 2014 06:34pm - Karl Bode

We’ve talked time and time again about the pipe dream on some fronts (mostly the entertainment industry) that you should tax broadband connections to give them the money they so justly deserve as victims of new business realities they repeatedly refused to acknowledge. It’s effectively a “you must be a criminal tax,” and despite being an immensely bad idea, it has obviously seen passage in numerous countries in the form of German levies on things like solid state drives and Canada’s tax on blank media. Fortunately here in the States, efforts to push these taxes on broadband users or universities run into strong opposition.

Most people understand that letting the entertainment industry tax everybody for the behavior of a few people simply makes no coherent sense. Except apparently for “musician and freelance writer” Chris Peak, who in at attempt at humor over at the Huffington Post proudly proclaims that he thinks it would be a nifty idea if all broadband subscribers had to pay a monthly fine for the behaviors of other people. Peak begins by proudly admitting he pirates, tossing around some of the usual arguments buried under said attempted humor (it’s “stealing!” and “bands and musicians have essentially given up on selling music!”), and reaches the point where he asks all broadband subscribers to pay more money for no good reason:

“The fix? There is a fix. And it could work. Tax me. Tax for me the amount of bandwidth I use. Tax me each month, then earmark the tax for the film and music industry. Collect whatever percentage off of that tax you want. Enter into an anti-piracy agreement with both the RIAA and MPAA, and distribute the tax as fairly as possible. It would be a difficult task to allocate the tax to the effected artists and software developers, but there are widely available lists, updated daily and weekly, of the most pirated albums, programs, and movies.”

Because it’s not like once those taxes are imposed they’ll endlessly shoot skyward, completely detached from any real-world financial realities, right? If only we had real-world examples of that to show Peak how awful this idea is. Fortunately, ISPs and the entertainment industry are both known for transparency and accurate math, so it’s not like they’ll try to expand and abuse such a levy at every conceivable opportunity, right? It’s also not like entertainment industry middlemen have a long history of taking this kind of money and ensuring they get the lion’s share of it, right? Peak’s idea is fool proof!

The author then cries a little bit about his inability to adapt to a new business paradigm he pretty clearly doesn’t understand:

“I anticipate in the very near future my own music being completely stolen from me, pirated, and offered for free for trade between my fans. Fans are great. I wish I had more (for self-esteem issues). But that music that you kind of stole from me… I spent years writing, years recording, and years begging and borrowing and spending my life’s savings on, hoping that I would find enough fans to buy my music. Because I kind of do this for a living and need to support myself. Get it?”

Got it. Surely the best possible way of building your admittedly-small fan base will be to call them thieves and impose an entitlement fee on top of every broadband connection in the nation, while demonstrating you have limited skills at adaptation. Stardom awaits!

Filed Under: broadband, chris peak, mpaa, piracy, riaa
Companies: huffington post

MPAA Head Chris Dodd: I'm Willing To Discuss Copyright Reform As Long As Nothing Changes

from the your-input-will-be-ignored-in-the-order-it-is-received dept

Chris Dodd, head of the MPAA, has decided that, 16 years after the Napsterpocalypse (which singlehandedly killed the recording and motion picture industries, both of which are now nothing but vague memories for pre-Gen Xers), it’s time to meet the tech industry in the middle and start working together.

But, as is Dodd’s way, “in the middle” means drawing a line inches away from the MPAA’s position and “working together” means making heavy concessions to the incumbent industries. Here’s what the Grand Dame of the movie business had to say while attending a celebration of US-Germany film collaborations.

“New technology has made the international exchange of cultural and entertainment content faster, easier and increasingly, a two-way street,” he said. “Technology and content need to live with each other. … Technology needs content, and content needs technology.”

So far, so good, even if it is a rather obvious statement. And so far, this preamble echoes the recent words of Jean Michel Jarre, who also began with an open-minded position when discussing the tech/content relationship, shortly before zipping it shut entirely and declaring copyright industries entitled to $300-400 of every smartphone sale.

Dodd says it’s a two-way street… then sets about hanging new one-way signs all over the place.

Addressing copyright rules, Dodd said he was “not frightened of reviewing or reforming copyright,” but said copyright rules shouldn’t be “eroded.”

Great. Dodd’s perfectly happy to discuss or reform copyright, just as long as nothing changes. Life +70 forever, then? Or more? The only thing that’s “eroded” over time is the public domain. The original copyright “rules” stated that these rights would be secured for a limited time. Life +70 years is limited in terms of the entire history and future of the world, but it’s certainly not “limited” in any logical sense of the word. Life +70 years is, on average, 110-130 years of copyright protection, which is more or less 50% of this country’s total length of existence.

So, let’s “review” copyright, but only if we’re looking to “strengthen” the rules (read: expand and extend). And let’s “reform” copyright, but only as long as nothing at all existing changes. Thanks for the invite, Chris, but this hardly looks like a promising discussion. All Dodd’s looking for is concessions from the tech industry — more permission forms and licensing fees and so on, until long after everyone has forgotten such tech blips as Facebook and Twitter and The Pirate Bay.

The only way the copyright industry (and I don’t mean creators, I mean the gatekeepers who have watched their cherished gates erode into nearly nothing) is going to keep up with the tech industry is to actually meet somewhere in the middle. And the industry needs to do a lot of catching up. We’re seeing industry figureheads finally recognize they can’t keep treating each new tech advance as the enemy, but it’s been a long, long time coming. They still seem to put 90% of their effort into enforcement, rather than innovation, and Dodd’s half-assed “halfway” gesture indicates the MPAA is unwilling to consider anything that doesn’t keep its extended-to-the-point-of-surreality copyright protection intact.

Filed Under: chris dodd, copyright reform, mpaa

The MPAA's Plan To Piss Off Young Moviegoers And Make Them Less Interested In Going To Theaters

from the do-these-guys-never-think-anything-through? dept

Given how important teenagers and those in their 20s are to the movie industry, you’d think one day they’d learn to stop being complete assholes to that demographic. For example, you’d think that they’d realize that young folks today really, really like their smartphones, and one of the main things they do with those smartphones is snap pictures or videos of just about anything and everything and share it with their friends via whichever platform they prefer, be it SnapChat, WhatsApp, Instagram, Vine, Facebook, Twitter or whatever else they might be using. It’s just what they do — and they seem to be doing it more and more often. Yet, the MPAA wants to make sure that if kids do this, theaters should call the police to have them arrested as quickly as possible.

The thing is, the MPAA should know that this is a recipe for disaster. In 2007, Jhannet Sejas went to see Transformers, and filmed 20-seconds to send to her brother to get him excited to go see the movie. The result? Police were called, she was arrested and threatened with jailtime. She was eventually pressured into pleading guilty to avoid jailtime. Samantha Tumpach wasn’t quite so lucky. She, along with her sister and her friends, went out to the movies in 2009 to celebrate her sister’s birthday. Since they were all having fun, she decided to film some of the group while they were watching the movie. Once again, police were called and she was arrested and spent two nights in jail. After widespread public outcry, prosecutors dropped the charges.

Given those high profile cases, combined with the fact that smartphones have become more ubiquitous, and the pastime of taking photos and videos has become ever more popular, you’d think that maybe, just maybe, someone at the MPAA would think to teach theater owners to be a bit more lenient about the kid just taking a photo or filming a couple seconds of a video. But that’s not how the MPAA operates. Its goal in life seems to be to think up ways of how it must have been wronged, and its weird and stupid obsession with movies captured by people filming in the theaters is really quite ridiculous.

The MPAA has now released its latest “best practices” for theaters, and it’s basically exactly what you should do if you want to piss off the demographic of folks who actually go to theaters. You can see the whole thing here if you want to see exactly what not to do.

And the MPAA is Obnoxious

The MPAA recommends theaters institute a “zero tolerance” policy, which appears to mean calling in the police if anyone so much as raises a smartphone. Here are a few snippets:

The MPAA recommends that theaters adopt a Zero Tolerance policy that prohibits the video or audio recording and the taking of photographs of any portion of a movie.

Theater managers should immediately alert law enforcement authorities whenever they suspect prohibited activity is taking place. Do not assume that a cell phone or digital camera is being used to take still photographs and not a full-length video recording. Let the proper authorities determine what laws may have been violated and what enforcement action should be taken.

Theater management should determine whether a theater employee or any other competent authority is empowered to confiscate recording devices, interrupt or interfere with the camcording, and/or ask the patron to leave the auditorium.

Even better, the MPAA reminds theaters that they should tell employees about their “TAKE ACTION! REWARD,” in which employees who capture an evil pirate in action get a whopping $500. In order to get the award, one of the requirements is “immediate notification to the police.” The theaters have to have posters, like the one above, on display if they want their employees to get the cash, so expect to see that kind of crap in theaters everywhere. And expect that employees seeking to cash in on that TAKE ACTION! REWARD to be calling the cops all the freaking time, because some kid raises his iPhone to take a quick picture of his buddies or something cool on screen.

Could the MPAA really be so out of touch and so completely oblivious that they think this is a good idea? Do they not employ anyone who has spent any time around teens and folks in their 20s? Do they honestly think that most police officers don’t have better things to do than rush to the local theater every 15 minutes because some employee is trying to get his $500 and the way to do that is to turn in the kids having fun and trying to share the experience (not the movie itself)? And, most importantly, does no one at the MPAA think that maybe, just maybe, turning theater employees into complete assholes will make fewer people want to go see movies?

Of course they don’t. That’s because the MPAA is made up of lawyers, like this guy, who are obsessed with one thing, and one thing only: “evil pirates who must be stopped.” It really seems like when the movie industry does well, it’s in spite of the MPAA. What a disastrous organization, working against the industry’s actual interests.

Filed Under: anti-piracy, best practices, camcording, mpaa, theaters
Companies: mpaa

Hollywood Accounting Strikes Again: Universal Sued For Screwing Over Its Own Sister Company

from the family-feud dept

We’ve discussed a few times the concept of Hollywood Accounting, which covers the various tricks of the trade pulled by the big studios to basically keep all the money for themselves, and guarantees that the movie is never, ever seen as “profitable,” as that would mean they would need to share some of the profits. It appears that we may be about to see significantly more dirty laundry revealing some of that Hollywood Accounting in detail. And this time, it’s extra special because it involves two companies who were corporate siblings for much of the time in dispute, as both were owned by Vivendi. However, StudioCanal is now suing Universal, claiming that Universal pulled accounting tricks to deny giving StudioCanal many, many millions of dollars that were owed.

For nearly ten years, Universal was delighted to accept StudioCanal’s investment of hundreds of millions of dollars to offset Universal’s financial obligations. During most of this period, StudioCanal and Universal were corporate siblings through common ownership by the French company Vivendi. The StudioCanal/Universal joint venture financed forty-four Working Title motion pictures, including About A Boy, Bill Elliot, Bridget Jones Diary, Frost/Nixon, Love Actually, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Pride And Prejudice, and United 93.

Last October, StudioCanal concluded an audit of the joint venture’s development and overhead expenses, which Universal had managed. StudioCanal also concluded audits of Universal’s distribution of several of the joint venture-produced motion pictures, in several (but hardly all) Universal-assigned territories and in several (but hardly all) media.

Those audits revealed that Universal was violating its fiduciary and contractual obligations to StudioCanal. For example, based on the audit reports, StudioCanal is informed and believes, and based thereon alleges that: (a) Universal intentionally hid from the partnership and kept for itself benefits it derived from off-balance sheet financing arrangements; (b) Universal failed to report, or reported negligible amounts of, ancillary revenues from sources such as music publishing, only to somehow “find” several million dollars in such revenues after receiving the audit reports; (c) Universal retained for itself financial benefits from vendors, thereby profiting for itself at the expense of its partners; (d) Universal double-charged the partnership for producing and other fees paid to Working Title without StudioCanal’s knowledge or approval; and (e) Universal deducted millions of dollars in unsubstantiated expenses before reporting the results to its partner StudioCanal.

Of course, none of this should be remotely surprising. We’ve seen so many stories of movie financing shenanigans that these stories hardly sound unique. It’s just that the lawsuit might make some of the actual details public, which would certainly be educational.

Filed Under: hollywood, hollywood accounting, hollywood math, mpaa, royalties
Companies: studiocanal, universal studios, vivendi

If I Were The MPAA… How I Would Deal With My Car Break-In

from the a-study-in-contrasts dept

My family and I got back from our annual vacation in the Current Middle Ages last Friday morning around 2 a.m. Exhausted from the trip, I forgot to take in my iPod and left it visibly displayed on the front seat. When I went out to the car the next morning, I found the passenger-side window broken and the iPod (along with some other items in the front seat) stolen. I called the police, and an officer came out to take my report. He was properly professional and sympathetic. He informed me that the chief tool available was a database that pawnshops must maintain of any electronic devices that are pawned. If the serial number on my iPod came up in the database, they would nab the felon. Otherwise, though, there wasn’t much hope. The officer also advised me that there had been some similar incidents in the general neighborhood and that the best way to avoid having my car broken into in the future was to make sure that no electronics or charging cords were visible. I thanked him for his professionalism and advice and that was that.

Then I got to thinking, what if I were the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) or the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)? How would I handle the theft of my iPod and the advice from the police on how to avoid future break ins? Rather differently, as I explain below . . . .

So if I were the MPAA, how would I handle this?

1. Berate the cop who answered my call for not stopping the crime before it happened. I would also go around to everyone in my neighborhood and accuse them of “supporting theft” from their failure to set up a neighborhood watch to protect my right to leave my iPod in the front seat of my car.
2. When the cop told me that I could reduce the likelihood of future car break-ins by keeping electronics hidden, I would shout at the cop for “supporting theft.” After all, I have a perfect right to keep my iPod in my car, prominently displayed if I want. How dare this cop tell me to change my behavior to avoid getting robbed!
3. Later, I would try to get the cop who advised me on how to avoid future car break-ins fired for “abetting car thieves.” I would conduct a public smear campaign in which I accused this cop of being in bed with thieves, fences, and other nefarious dealers in stolen goods because he “supports theft” by advising me how to avoid future car break-ins rather than setting a 24/7 guard on my driveway or preemptively arresting anyone who looks like he or she might steal my iPod. After all, if you really cared about stopping theft, you wouldn’t tell me to change my behavior or take steps to protect myself! I have a perfect right to leave my iPod in my front seat, and theft is wrong. So telling me to hide my iPod to avoid a break in means you don’t really want to enforce the law.
4. While I’m at it, I will also accuse my neighbors of secretly wanting to steal my iPod. They have motive (who wouldn’t want a free iPod?) and opportunity, so they are all prime suspects. I will demand the police conduct a house-to-house search. If they are too busy, I insist the police give ME the right to do a house-to-house search. I will also start harassing my neighbors and treating them like criminals. If they tell me to bugger off, and demand to see a warrant before I search their homes for my iPod, I will point to their bad attitude as proof that they are either thieves or support thieves. Why else would they object?
5. I would lobby the Montgomery County Council to place a 24/7 guard on my driveway so I can leave my iPod in the front seat. I would also insist on a video surveillance system and fingerprinting for anyone who comes with 500 feet of my car. Any neighbors who complain about what a waste of tax payer money this is, or that it invades their privacy, or that they don’t like giving fingerprints to police to protect my right to leave my iPod in the front seat “support theft” and deserve the smear treatment.
6. I would give $1 million in campaign donations to any County Council rep who votes for my proposals. I would give the same amount to the opponents of any County Council member who even suggests that my proposals are a little extreme and maybe I ought to just put my iPod in the glove compartment. I would hold parties where County Council members can meet famous movie stars and recording artists, all of whom will urge the members of the County Council to vote for my eminently reasonable proposal to avert the veritable crime wave of iPod thefts in my driveway.
7. I would produce statistics that show that Montgomery County loses thousands of dollars and numerous jobs annually from iPod theft from my driveway. Anyone who questions the accuracy of these statistics “supports iPod theft.”
8. Then I will wonder why I am so unpopular with my neighbors. I will conclude they have been deluded by the pawnshop lobby. Or they support iPod theft. But it can’t be anything wrong with me, since I have a perfect right to leave my iPod in the front seat of my car and anyone who questions any measures to protect that right either supports theft or is being controlled by the pawnshop lobby.

You may ask, wouldn’t it actually be easier, cheaper and more effective for me to change my habits and be a bit more careful about leaving my iPod and other electronic devices on the front seat of my car? To which I can only say “if you can even ask that question, you clearly support iPod theft.”

Stay tuned . . .

Cross-posted from Tales of the Sausage Factory

Filed Under: blame, law enforcement, mpaa

Wyden To Obama: Hollywood Shouldn't Know More About TPP Than Congress

from the transparency? dept

Senator Wyden has been at the forefront of raising concerns about the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement (as with many other issues we follow), specifically over the total lack of transparency from the USTR on the issue. While USTR Ron Kirk has pretended that “listening” to a few people is transparency, it’s not. Actually sharing what you’re doing is transparency.

Now, it’s one thing for the USTR to refuse to share with the public what it’s supposedly negotiating on their behalf — but what if it is refusing to share with the very people in charge of overseeing its actions? As you hopefully know it’s Congress, not the Executive branch, that has the authority to regulate foreign commerce. While the USTR is often granted the power to handle negotiations, it is only to be done with oversight from Congress.

So, you would think that the staff director on the Senate Finance Committee’s Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs and Global Competitiveness, would be able to “oversee” what the USTR is doing by getting a copy of the USTR’s positions. That staffer, who works for Senator Wyden, got all the proper security clearances… and the USTR basically gave him the finger. According to Wyden:

As the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee’s Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness, my office is responsible for conducting oversight over the USTR and trade negotiations. To do that, I asked that my staff obtain the proper security credentials to view the information that USTR keeps confidential and secret. This is material that fully describes what the USTR is seeking in the TPP talks on behalf of the American people and on behalf of Congress. More than two months after receiving the proper security credentials, my staff is still barred from viewing the details of the proposals that USTR is advancing.

But you know who’s not having any trouble seeing the details? The MPAA, Comcast, PHRMA and others. Again, from Senator Wyden:

The majority of Congress is being kept in the dark as to the substance of the TPP negotiations, while representatives of U.S. corporations – like Halliburton, Chevron, PHRMA, Comcast, and the Motion Picture Association of America – are being consulted and made privy to details of the agreement.

Wyden is introducing some new legislation in response to this, called the Congressional Oversight Over Trade Negotiations Act, which is actually just a clarification of legislation passed in 2002 that created the Congressional Oversight Group in an attempt to increase coordination between Congress and USTR on such matters. Again, Senator Wyden:

Congress passed legislation in 2002 to form the Congressional Oversight Group, or COG, to foster more USTR consultation with Congress. I was a senator in 2002. I voted for that law and I can tell you the intention of that law was to ensure that USTR consulted with more Members of Congress not less.

In trying to get to the bottom of why my staff is being denied information, it seems that some in the Executive Branch may be interpreting the law that established the COG to mean that only the few Members of Congress who belong to the COG can be given access to trade negotiation information, while every other Member of Congress, and their staff, must be denied such access. So, this is not just a question of whether or not cleared staff should have access to information about the TPP talks, this is a question of whether or not the administration believes that most Members of Congress can or should have a say in trade negotiations.

Again, having voted for that law, I strongly disagree with such an interpretation and find it offensive that some would suggest that a law meant to foster more consultation with Congress is intended to limit it. But given that the TPP negotiations are currently underway and I – and the vast majority of my colleagues and their staff – continue to be denied a full understanding of what the USTR is seeking in the agreement, we do not have time to waste on a protracted legal battle over this issue. Therefore, I am introducing legislation to clarify the intent of the COG statute.

The legislation, I propose, is straightforward. It gives all Members of Congress and staff with appropriate clearance access to the substance of trade negotiations. Finally, Members of Congress who are responsible for conducting oversight over the enforcement of trade agreements will be provided information by the Executive Branch indicating whether our trading partners are living up to their trade obligations. Put simply, this legislation would ensure that the representatives elected by the American people are afforded the same level of influence over our nation’s policies as the paid representatives of PHRMA, Halliburton and the Motion Picture Association.

How ridiculous is it that a Senator in charge of oversight of the USTR has to introduce special legislation just to find out what’s being negotiated by the USTR, supposedly on the public’s behalf? The ridiculous levels of secrecy from the USTR are shameful. It’s sad that it hasn’t received more attention.

Filed Under: mpaa, obama, ron kirk, ron wyden, tpp, transparency, ustr

Congressional Staffers Still Can't Come To Terms With What Happened Over SOPA

from the time-to-learn dept

In a short article about a panel of Congressional staffers at the NCTA show, they basically admitted that any new “anti-piracy” legislation may be tough to pass — with one staffer saying that the SOPA protests “poisoned the well.” However, perhaps more interesting were the comments from Stephanie Moore, the “Democrat’s chief counsel on the House Judiciary Committee” who apparently still refuses to believe that the public actually spoke out against the bill of their own free will:

“What happened was a misinformation campaign,” said Moore. “People were basically misled into contacting Congressmen with claims that were extraordinary. There was some genuine concern, but as for it being a genuine home grown grassroots up-from-the-streets opposition, I beg to differ on that.”

I always find this line of reasoning quite extraordinary. If you look at the history of copyright law — especially over the past 40 years or so, it’s been one “misinformation campaign” after another by RIAA and MPAA lobbyists. As we’ve discussed, Congress has bent over backwards to pass 15 anti-piracy laws in the last 30 years — each one pushed by industry lobbying about how they would collapse and die without the laws being passed, and how no one will create content without such laws. They’ve been wrong every single time. So even if it was a misinformation campaign on the other side, at best all it would do is even out the playing field. Besides, looking at the arguments in favor of SOPA and PIPA, they were so full of blatant misinformation that I don’t think any amount of misinformation against the bills would have even out the score.

But, to be clear, since I was pretty closely involved in the effort to stop these dangerous bills, I can say first hand that the claim that this was a “misinformation campaign” and that it wasn’t about an “up-from-the-streets opposition” are hogwash by a person speaking from ignorance, anger or jealousy over having their own pet bill blocked. The folks working against the bill worked pretty damn hard to paint a clear and accurate picture of the bill. While there were various people who helped shepherd the process along, the protests didn’t take on any life until various communities of people took them over and ran with them — starting with the users on Tumblr and Reddit (followed closely by those on Wikipedia).

Of course, when you have any large group of internet users, not all of them are going to understand the nuances or the details. So, certainly some misinformation got into the discussion. To be fair, though, the largest bit of “misinformation” I saw on the anti-SOPA side was from people who didn’t realize that (under serious public pressure), Lamar Smith issued a manager’s amendment to take out the worst of the worst of SOPA (still leaving in plenty of bad). Some people mistakenly referred to the impact of the original bill in protesting later versions. This was, indeed, a mistake, but hardly a result of “misinformation.” After all, those issues were in the original bill and were clearly part of what the House Judiciary Committee’s staff was going for when it scribbled down the bill as the MPAA dictated it crafted the bill.

What I do know is that when misleading suggestions were made on the anti-SOPA email list, knowledgeable people quickly pushed back against those claims, noting that they were not true and should not be used. I did not see that on the other side. When the bogus claims of the entertainment industry were widely debunked, the supporters of SOPA kept on quoting them (and still do, to this day).

So, I’m sorry, but the idea that the defeat of SOPA was a misinformation campaign and not a grassroots effort is pure bunk. And if Moore wants to avoid a repeat, rather than lashing out mistakenly, and misunderstanding what happened, she should perhaps spend some time actually learning about why people were so upset by SOPA. But, of course, we know that won’t happen.

Filed Under: anti-piracy, house judiciary committee, mpaa, ncta, sopa, stephanie moore

Chris Dodd Says MPAA Is On The Wrong Track; We Agree

from the well,-let's-see-some-leadership dept

Over at the Cannes Film Festival, MPAA boss Chris Dodd apparently told Variety that the MPAA is “on the wrong track” when it calls infringement “theft.”

“We’re in a transformative period with an explosion of technology that’s going to need content… We’re going to have to be more subtle and consumer-oriented…. We’re on the wrong track if we describe this as thievery.”

Now, I thought that was kind of interesting, because it appears that the folks who work for Dodd haven’t received the memo. The MPAA website is chock full of his minions calling it “theft” every chance they get. There’s an entire page supposedly dedicated to “types of content theft.” There’s a page on “rogue websites,” that calls them “havens for theft.” There’s a link in the footer to a website called FightFilmTheft.org. There’s also a link in the footer to the ICE website (you know, the government agency illegally seizing and censoring websites based on no evidence) saying to click the logo “to report IP theft.” Then there’s the MPAA’s “blog,” which as of this writing has the word “theft” on the front page a mere fifteen times (and “steal” or “stealing” another three times). So, er, Dodd might want to have a chat with his staffers.

Because, according to Chris Dodd, the MPAA is on the wrong track.

And, for once, I think we actually agree with Chris Dodd. Of course, some of us have been saying this since Dodd’s first speech on the job — which (of course) focused on saying how infringement was “no different” than theft.

There’s also some history here. For a while, the industry focused on the word “piracy” to describe infringement. But about three years ago, a movie studio exec made the claim that the industry had “made a mistake” using the word “piracy,” because it “glamorized” the practice (of course, Hollywood helped out with the glamorization thanks to some big blockbuster movies starring Johnny Depp…). Practically overnight, the use of “piracy” changed in the industry to “content theft.” So, perhaps this is the start of a new phase…

Either way, it certainly doesn’t seem like Dodd has really figured out just how disastrous things are going under his “leadership.” Much of the story still has him blaming tech companies for stopping SOPA and PIPA. Until he realizes that it was the public the spoke up (and actually helped drag along those tech companies), he’s never going to understand what happened, and never going to be able to lead appropriately. Hell, you can even see his dangerous framing in the short statement above. Notice he said they need to be more “subtle.” He hasn’t realized that their entire policy focus is wrong. He just thinks they’re being too brazen about it.

We’ve asked Dodd (repeatedly, now) to actually come out and talk to the public. I’m sure the folks at Reddit would be happy to set up an AMA. We’d be happy to have him come and chat with our community as well. Yet, he refuses to do so. Instead, he continues to only lobby behind the scenes and blame the wrong parties in public. Things are never going to improve if he keeps on that path. He doesn’t need to be “more subtle.” He needs to actually understand what that public tried to tell him back in January. Instead, he seems to be sticking his fingers in his ears and taking random guesses.

Filed Under: chris dodd, mpaa, piracy, theft