MPAA Canine Cops now Comic Book heroes
p2pnet news Kids & Kartels | MPAA News:- Unlikely and unbelievable as it may seem, the ever-gullible mainstream media have been bitten by two Labrador retrievers.
Again.
Shades of Canada’s ludicrous Captain Copyright, Lucky and Flo, Hollywood’s two super sniffing sleuths, are to become a comic book heroes, turned loose to pollute the minds of kids with corporate copyright crap on behalf of Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney.
“The MPAA has allocated two bootleg-sniffing retrievers to a school education campaign and donated another two canines to Malaysian authorities to help pick up the scent of counterfeiters,” says Variety.
And it’s all part of what the MPAA calls the Weekly Reader series for children winningly entitled “Crime Fighting Canines”.
The idea is to, “educate children about copyright theft and various forms of piracy, how to identify counterfeit DVDs, the consequences of film piracy and, most importantly, why protecting copyrights is important to them,” according to the recently disgraced MPAA.
As part of another educational effort, it had been trumpeting that 44% of Hollywood’s domestic losses were down to file sharing students.
But then it admitted it had made a slight error: the figure should have been 15%, said MPAA boss Dan Glickman.
And even that number is wrong, says Educause. If anyone were to assign a number to Hollywood losses attributable to file sharing, it would probably be more like 3%, says the organisation, and other experts would argue even that is incorrect —- that far from detracting from Hollywood’s sales, file sharing is a form of viral advertising which mostly benefits, rather than harms, of the music industry
Meanwhile, young American (for now) children in grades five through seven are being targeted by the MPAA, Lucky and Flo.
Not only but also, gratified by the astonishing response from the corporate press corps, the MPAA has generously given Malaysia authorities —- the first, and so far only, country to fall hook, line and sinker for the copyright canine PR ploy —- two more Labradors named Paddy and Manny.
They can’t tell the difference between ‘legal’ and ‘fake’ DVDs any more than can Lucky or Flo. The best they can do is sniff out chemicals used in the leading manufacturer and it is up to police forces suborned by the movie industry to decide if they’re counterfeits or not.
The numerous possibilities for mistakes which could, and which will, affect legitimate shippers are clear to anyone with half a brain.
But who cares? It makes good copy.
In Canada, Access Copyright’s farcical Captain Copyright comic book ‘hero’ was shot down in flames soon after he was launched.
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Also See:
Variety – MPAA canines to dog movie pirates, March 3, 2008
recently disgraced MPAA – Huge Hollywood mistake in student download stats, January 23, 2008
more like 3% – Educause against anti-college act, February 21, 2008\
Lucky or Flo – Malaysia honours MPAA sniffer dogs, August 21, 2007
shot down in flames – Open letter to parents, July 2, 2006
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March 4th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Linux DVDs: the perfect decoy
or to get BSA to join ‘em: adobe creative suite + windows
March 5th, 2008 at 4:48 am
Lucky & Flo comic? Stick a ‘MARVEL COMICS’ logo on it and see how long it takes for pirates to download it (D’oh!)
March 6th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
They look like nice dogs, too bad they couldn’t be put to better use, like sniffing for bombs or leading blind people.