p2pnet - rss feed: RIAA, MPAA, penalise property owners
p2pnet news special | MPAA | RIAA:- Rape and murder used to be the top of the list when it came to major crime.
But that’s not true any more.
A purely commercial civil activity has been muscled into the line-up.
As of today, if you live in Los Angeles and you’re a building owner on whose property someone has made counterfeit movies or music discs, you’re as guilty as the criminals.
It used to be known as copyright infringement but these days it’s called piracy.
Ten years ago the general public had never heard of it but in 2008, thanks to the massive and ongoing international multi-media campaign instigated and operated by the major movie studios and record labels, the costs of which must now run into billions of dollars, it’s always in the headlines.
According to Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney (aka Hollywood) and Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG (the Big 4 record labels), it’s the duty of quite literally everyone from young children to national police forces to guard and protect entertainment industry cartel profits.
Exaggeration?
In Hong Kong, “200,000 members of local youth groups will ‘spy on internet activity‘ and, ‘report illegal file transfers’,” p2pnet reported in 2006, and it’s now routine for the labels and studios to hijack law enforcement officers and agencies funded by local taxpayers in the interests of the corporate bottom-line.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Increasingly, the MPAA and RIAA, two American enforcement units which front for the studios and labels, have been working together and in a announcement today, they’re boasting of a new triumph which for the moment involves only Los Angeles, but which will inevitably spread across the US and, ultimately, will be carried into Europe and Asia and even further afield.
“The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has approved a new ordinance designed to hold property owners accountable for the manufacture and sale of pirated movies and music on their premises,” the two so-called trade associations is crow in a joint press release, stating >>>
The ordinance, approved yesterday, expands the definition of nuisance properties to include those that are used to illegally manufacture and sell recordings and audiovisual works.
“We are extremely appreciative of [County] Supervisor [Zev] Yaroslavsky’s efforts to gain support for this ordinance,” says MPAA boss Dan Glickman.
“Strong protection of intellectual property is necessary in order to maintain its [LA’s] vibrancy and economic health,” says the RIAA’s Mitch Bainwol.
Definitely stay tuned.
Jon Newton - p2pnet
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May 7th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Whats next? Fine property owners when tenants cook up meth/coke or grow weed on their properties too? Oh of course not, that wouldn’t make any sense, but somehow this does?
May 7th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
It just shows how deep corruption has gone.
May 7th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Maybe they can steal all surrounding properties also as they must have known about it and didn’t report it.
May 7th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
“those that are used to illegally manufacture and sell recordings and audiovisual works”
Anybody know exactly what that means? Depending on the definition, this could be one of the RIAA’s most diabolical plots to date.
May 8th, 2008 at 1:39 am
Eventually a day will come when you’ll have to pay astronomically exorbitant prices in order to buy a computer, a radio, absolutely anything that could be connected to media since the RIAA insists the need to account for thousands of copyrights that could be infringed as a result of the “making available” risk. Somehow, one way or the other, everyone will be at fault. And of course, we won’t get the chance to assure Edgar Bronfman Jr. that “we no longer do that”, regardless of whether we’ve ever started, have any literacy with regards to the online world, or are even alive to begin with.
May 8th, 2008 at 3:11 am
So, if I burn an album on a CD for a friend my landowner could get sued/fined? What a joke…
“Strong protection of intellectual property is necessary in order to maintain its [LA’s] vibrancy and economic health,”, says Mr. BrainAwol. Yeah right. Seriously, the RIAA/MPAA are a fucking cancer. Greedy leeches in a crisis…
May 8th, 2008 at 4:58 am
Everyone knows that the RIAA and MPAA are greedy leeches in crisis….. but yet no one is willing to take a stand against them in the courts (judges are too stupid to know when they are being punked) or in the legislatures.
May 8th, 2008 at 5:05 am
The beleagered RIAA/MPAA win all the time, because they are *RIGHT*! Just remember that next time you lot whinge about them.
May 8th, 2008 at 5:24 am
whats wrong with making freeloaders pay for there theft?
May 8th, 2008 at 5:30 am
As long as LA and all of california have been a drain on the US. I for one wish the …”giant” quake would come along and drop the whole damn state into the ocean…
That would be the best thing that could happen here….other than maybe Bush being impeached and tried as a traitor.
May 8th, 2008 at 5:54 am
Why not make them produce movies/music that are actually worth buying? That would give them the money they crave so much.
The land of the free indeed.
May 8th, 2008 at 7:00 am
I’m talking shit. Sorry.
May 8th, 2008 at 8:56 am
“Whats next? Fine property owners when tenants cook up meth/coke or grow weed on their properties too?”
No, for that they can seize the property, and auction it off, keeping the profits for the police department. No conviction needed, they don’t even have to file charges.
Do a search on asset seizure and forfeiture.
May 8th, 2008 at 10:23 am
This is just as bad as “eminent domain” which allows the city or state to simply take your property as long as THEY vote that it is for “the common good”. No matter that you have owned it for generations, or you emmigrated here fifty years ago and built a thriving business on it….if they decide they want to put a light-rail station on that corner where your business sits, you’re screwed. Just happened to a Seattle couple last year, and when the train deal fell through they poor Chinese couple found out that the law prevented them from re-purchasing their business & property back from the state–it was sold AT A PROFIT to an apartment developer. For being so liberal why does Seattle allow this crap to take place?! And why does America allow the RIAA/MPAA train to keep chugging away?? This L.A. law is unbelievable, and I only hope that one of those city council people who voted for it will have their apartment building taken away and be forced to move…would be poetic justice.