MPAA sued over screener ban
Fourteen small movie houses are suing the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) in a bid to to try to halt outgoing MPAA boss Jack Valenti’s ban on sending ’screener’ video copies to awards groups.
It will "chill the financing of independent films" by limiting the awards they can receive, say the plaintiffs, who include Talking Wall Pictures, Sandcastle 5 Productions and Salty Features.
They want at least $25 million in damages and a finding that the MPAA was conspiring to monopolize the film industry, restricting trade through unlawful and unreasonable agreements with its governing members, says Larry Neumeister’s Associated Press report here.
Acting for the major studios, MPAA President Jack Valenti imposed a ban because "screener" DVDs were re-appearing for download on file sharing networks. However, following protests from independent studios including, ’specialized’ indy film units such as Vivendi Universal’s Focus Features and Sony Corp’s Sony Pictures Classics, under an agreement with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, movie studios would be allowed to send numbered, encoded videocassettes to about Oscar voters, "but not to the far larger pool that votes on lesser honors," says the story.
The latter group includes Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild awards, critics prizes and other movie honours.
Rich Taylor, an MPAA spokesman, said the lawsuit is misguided because the reason for the ban was "to reduce piracy and to preserve the motion picture industry for filmmakers, both large and small."
But, "If the ban is not lifted immediately, critical exposure, momentum and buzz opportunities will be irreparably missed," the lawsuit the AP story says, going on:
"The lawsuit said the MPAA’s actions toward the small movie producers ‘were outrageous and were taken with evil motive’."
