Sven
Oct 2004
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Today's frontpage of the Hollywood Reporter
I thought this fits our discussion...
Nov. 05, 2004
MPAA launches legal offensive against online pirates
By Jesse Hiestand
Movie pirates were warned Thursday that they are under surveillance as potential targets of copyright infringement lawsuits that the MPAA will begin filing Nov. 16.
The campaign has been quietly under way for months and will tentatively involve about 250 cases filed in courts around the United States.
The potential defendants are people who allow dozens if not hundreds of movies to be uploaded from their computers onto such peer-to-peer file-trading networks as Kazaa and eDonkey. Warner Bros., Sony Corp., the Walt Disney Co. and the other MPAA members hope to head off the problem before it gets out of hand, as happened with the record labels.
"If we don't act now, the consequences will be devastating to the entire film industry," MPAA president and CEO Dan Glickman told reporters at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. "This is about protecting some things that all Americans hold dear: consumer choice, artistic creativity and economic growth. They cannot happen if the creators' ability to come up with these works of art is impinged by the fact that they are being distributed for free around the world."
The lawsuits follow and complement efforts to educate people about the economic consequences of movie piracy. An ad slated to coincide with the filings states "Is this you?" and lists the user names and Internet addresses of hundreds of actual file traders.
"I think (the lawsuits) will be a major deterrent both to people currently doing it and people who might be thinking of doing it in the future," MGM chairman and CEO Alex Yemenidjian said.
The campaign has broad industry support, uniting the studios and unions despite their recent contract fights over residuals from legitimate DVD sales. Glickman and his top anti-piracy lieutenants were joined Thursday by DGA national executive director Jay Roth and secretary-treasurer Gil Cates, WGA West executive director John McLean and president Daniel Petrie Jr., SAG national officer Anne-Marie Johnson and IATSE International representative in charge Joe Aredas.
"This is stealing, plain and simple," Cates said. "Why would my fellow directors want to make a film that is exploited in that way, which robs them of both their livelihood and their work? And why would the studios want to put money into a film that can be stolen and illegally mass-distributed before or just as it reaches the screen? The answer is we won't and they won't."
Johnson added that piracy has a direct impact on workers throughout the industry. "The majority of us are one residual paycheck from losing our health and pension," he said, "so we can't and we won't condone peer-to-peer file sharing and allow theft to continue."
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who did not attend the briefing, said online piracy has implications for the state because movies generate about $30 billion in annual revenue.
"We must teach our children that the illegal downloading of movies and music is wrong and that it has consequences," Schwarzenegger said in a statement.
The MPAA will follow the procedures the RIAA pioneered in going after illegal music trading: first, intercept the Internet address of a person sharing a movie on a peer-to-peer network and then sue them as an unidentified "Doe" defendant in a federal civil case. The MPAA can then subpoena the Internet service provider to reveal the person's name, allowing the person to be sued individually for damages.
Copyright law puts a price of $30,000 on each film infringement, or up to $150,000 if it is deemed willful.
It is expected that most people will be given an opportunity to settle the cases for a few thousand dollars, as the RIAA has done with many of the 6,200 cases it has filed since September 2003.
The RIAA's campaign has produced mixed results, from raising the public's awareness of copyright law to early embarrassments like suing the wrong people.
Experts say movie and music piracy are fundamentally different.
Film files, whether from ripped DVDs or camcorded in theaters, are far larger and more cumbersome to transfer electronically than songs, though that has become less of an issue as home consumers add broadband connections.
Music and movies also are viewed differently by copyright law, according to attorney Dan Ballard, who advised some of the consumers sued by the RIAA. The courts have recognized a person's right to make copies of music they own for personal, in-home use, he said. No such right has been extended to movies.
"I don't know of any fair-use argument for downloading a movie, so the courts are going to be very receptive to the MPAA's cases where they may have been a little more reluctant with the RIAA's cases," Ballard said. "Consumers also seem to consider movies differently. Everyone knows it's unlawful to download a movie, so the gestalt is that it's acceptable for songs but not for movies."
Others say the industry suits are ineffective because recent studies show that P2P traffic is at least as high if not higher now than it was when the RIAA started suing people.
"It's also a bit misguided to launch these lawsuits against movie fans at a time when the (movie) industry is enjoying fantastic profits," the Electric Frontier Foundation's Fred von Lohman said. "There is absolutely no evidence that peer-to-peer file sharing is hurting Hollywood's bottom line as opposed to the music industry."
The MPAA estimates that the studios lose about $3.5 billion annually to physical piracy like bootlegged DVDs but does not have a ready figure for Internet-related losses.
Glickman said the MPAA was not anti-technology, as evinced by CinemaNow, Movieflix, Movielink and other legitimate, studio-sanctioned online movie services. Nor were the lawsuits timed to the studios' setbacks in the Grokster case, he said.
In that case, courts have ruled that there are substantial noninfringing uses to P2P technology, prompting the MPAA, RIAA and National Music Publishers' Assn. to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft recently vowed to prosecute large-scale and organized crime-based piracy operations, complementing the MPAA's decision to go after individuals.
"We would rather pull people into theaters than drag them into court," Glickman said. "At the same time, we will use every tool we have to limit theft and to limit piracy and the other problems technology can cause."
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Last edited by Sven on 02-23-2007 at 05:04 PM
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10-26-2004 04:33 AM
I personally believe the man doesn't have an ounce of talent but as i have seen others feel different (Some people actually liked Resident Evil and A vs P!! Go figure!) I was prepared to give him a chance over Alien Vs Predator. He maintained the studio made him butcher the film in order to receive a PG certificate and he told the fans to await the uncut dvd to see his true vision. What a surprise.... 3 months later he says that there was no uncut version and it was always shot as a PG movie. 
