MPAA cheapskates
p2pnet.net news:- The MPAA have responded to the claims that they illegally used Patrick Robin’s blogging software. They say they were only testing it, and that the blog was ‘never advertised to the public in any way’.
I wonder what would happen if a filesharer said he was just ‘testing’ a movie.
Earlier this month, we wrote about how the MPAA has used Patrick Robin’s blogging software and violated the linkware license it’s distributed under by removing Robin’s name and all links back to his site. The organisation has replied with a list of excuses, hoping at least one might stick.
The MPAA has removed Forest Blog from their site. The Director of Application Development replied with the following e-mail:
The material has been removed from our Web server.
No Web links were ever provided to the blog.
* The blog was never assigned a domain name.
* The blog was never advertised to the public in any way.
* The material on the server was a proof of concept awaiting approval to move into production.
* The blog was only ever used for testing purposes.
* Should we have decided to make the move to production, then we would have paid the 25 Pounds that would have authorized us to run a version of the blog without the logos and links.
Sounds innocent, doesn’t it? And it might even be considered an honest mistake, if the MPAA wasn’t on a rampage, suing everybody in sight for copyright violations. The question that arose last time was, how can an organisation that’s only goal is to rid the world of piracy go ahead and illegally use someone else’s copyrighted work?
Would someone who downloads a movie from one of the MPAA’s studios be able to get away by saying they were only ‘testing’ the movie, and that they put it up on the Internet, but provided no links to it? Ever heard of Google? Patrick Robin, too, makes a similar comparison:
Whilst that all sounds fair enough but I doubt I’d get away with pirating a few movies providing I didn’t advertise it and only used them for testing purposes. hmmm!
Torrentfreak – The Netherlands
Also See:
MediaPost – Fox Lets Consumers Download TV Shows Through Affiliates’ Web Sites, March 2, 2007
Variety – Fox downloads ready for primetime, February 28, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the end (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
March 2nd, 2007 at 2:18 pm
It must get awful confusing in all of these “pipes”.
I mean, if google spidered it, links existed somewhere, which technically, and according to their terms legally, they are therefore responsible for it. They apparently don’t understand that a search engine will find pretty much anything you don’t protect.
March 2nd, 2007 at 7:53 pm
Funny how it’s a case of ‘do as i say, not do as i do’ with the xxAA’s isn’t it?
March 2nd, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Hi, Jon:
If Mr. Robin would like to sue them here in the States, you have my number.
Jordan.
March 2nd, 2007 at 11:08 pm
So, no excuse for MPAA!
March 3rd, 2007 at 3:58 am
They didn’t want the links because that would have been free advertising for the software developer.