p2pnet - rss feed: MPAA ‘bootlegging’ charge
p2p news / p2pnet: ‘This Film is Not Yet Rated’ is a documentary investigation into the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) film ratings system and its "profound effect on American culture," said its director, Kirby Dick, last December.
Now Dick is accusing the MPAA of making an illegal bootleg copy, says the Los Angeles Times.
"The MPAA admitted Monday that it had duplicated ‘This Film Is Not Yet Rated’ without the filmmaker’s permission after director Kirby Dick submitted his movie in November for an MPAA rating," says the story.
"The Hollywood trade organization said that it did not break copyright law, insisting that the dispute is part of a Dick-orchestrated ‘publicity stunt’ to boost the film’s profile."
The MPAA is itself a past-master at PR stunts which are picked up by the mainstream media and reproduced as fact, the New Century Media farce being an example of one such.
In it, the MPAA said it seized $30 million in illegal stampers and DVD. But it transpired that the $30 million figure was pure imagination, no ‘pirate’ product was seized and "False allegations" have "slandered our name and reputation and damaged the business that my husband and I spent 14 years to build," said Jennifer Yu, New Century Media’s owner.
‘This Film Is Not Yet Rated’ will be shown at the Sundance Film Festival tomorrow night and it, "examines what Dick believes are the MPAA’s double standards for rating explicit depictions of sex on the one hand and gruesome violence on the other," says the LA Times.
The documentary asks if:
- Hollywood movies and independent films are rated equally for comparable content
- Sexual content in gay-themed movies is given harsher ratings penalties than their heterosexual counterparts
- Extreme violence is given an R rating while sexuality is banished to the cutting room floor
- Hollywood studios receive detailed directions as to how to change an NC-17 film into an R, while independent film producers are left guessing
- Keeping the raters and the rating process secret leaves the MPAA entirely unaccountable for its decisions
"Michael Donaldson, a lawyer representing Dick, has written the MPAA demanding that it ‘immediately return all copies’ of the film in its possession, and explain who approved the making of the copy and who within the MPAA has looked at the reproduction," says the LA Times.
It has MPAA spokeswoman Kori Bernards saying Dick spied on the members of the MPAA’s Classification and Rating Administration, "including going through their garbage and following them as they drove their children to school".
"We were concerned about the raters and their families," the story quotes her as saying.
The MPAA copy of "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" was "locked away," and wasn’t being copied or distributed.
Also See:
documentary investigation - MPAA movie censorship, December 9, 2005
Los Angeles Times - MPPA finds itself accused of piracy, January 24, 2006
farce - MPAA kops in another ‘raid’, June 25, 2005
January 25th, 2006 at 12:06 pm
The history of self regulation shows only one thing: It never works a long time. It was always a ploy from day one to calm the people, counting on the fact that people have no memory and are naive.
Just look at the American federal court system… the last time a complaint caused the removal of a judge was in 1936.
Always, the foxes guarding the chicken coop.
And while on the subject of movies, don’t forget how movies are selected for prizes, and what film critics say. All nonsense.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com