MPAA pillories 13-year-old
p2p news / p2pnet: The Big Four record labels were the first to deliberately decide trying to criminalize and denigrate the people upon whom they depend for their existence is good business practice.
Using their RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), they’re trying, and failing, to terrorise their customers into buying product by threatening them with specious lawsuits.
While Jack Valenti ruled the RIAA’s opposite number in the movie industry, the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), the studios largely refrained from employing the same brain-dead tactic.
But now Dan ‘Jedi’ Glickman is in charge and the MPAA has sunk to the same lower-than-whale-excreta level as the RIAA.
In its latest triumph, it’s dragooned a 13-year-old Wisconsin child into publicly apologizing for downloading four movies. And if that were not bad enough, the boy, Ben Rangel, also has to “warn” others, “not to swap movies and music illegally,” says the Racine Report.
He, “appeared Wednesday before more than 100 seventh- and eight-grade students at Maple Dale School in this northern Milwaukee suburb,” says the story.
What did he say to them?
“Sooner or later, my grandpa got in a lot of trouble, and it was because of me. …. I am here to say it wasn’t worth it.”
The MPAA had filed against grandfather Fred Lawrence, 67, who, “initially ignored a letter offering to settle the matter out of court”.
Offering to settle the matter out of court. It all seems gentlemanly, almost helpful, doesn’t it? But these cynical MPAA ’settlement’ offers are exactly the same as the RIAA’s – totally self-serving and extortionate.
“Rangel, who was then 12, admitted downloading ‘The Incredibles,’ ‘I, Robot,’ ‘The Grudge’ and ‘The Forgotten’ over a peer-to-peer electronic file-sharing network in December 2004, not knowing it was illegal,” says the Racine Report, adding:
“His appearance at the school was part of an out-of-court settlement Lawrence reached with the film studios last month that included paying them an undisclosed amount.
“Rangel was joined at the school by MPAA representatives and Parry Aftab, executive director of Wired Kids, an organization devoted to educating children about online legal and safety issues.”
By an amazing coincidence, Wired Kids recently awarded the MPAA a prize for its school ‘education‘ efforts.
Glickman must be feeling especially proud of himself.
Also See:
terrorise their customers – Patti Santangelo fights on, January 27, 2006
Racine Report – Racine teen apologizes for downloading movies, January 26, 2006
extortionate – File sharing, p2p criminals, March 12, 2005
‘education‘ efforts – MPAA wins Wired Kids award, May 26, 2005
January 27th, 2006 at 10:49 pm
“Sooner or later, my grandpa got in a lot of trouble, and it was because of me. …. I am here to say it wasn’t worth it.”
This is great! Legal advice from a 13 year old kid.
There must be a reason for having a kid tell other kids what is right and what is not, meaning lawful and unlawful. One with more credibility was not found. Certainly no one from RIAA can explain anything in a way a kid could understan.
And you know what? Te last RIAA CD I purchased was not worth it either. Actually it was more like crap.
January 28th, 2006 at 1:16 am
I seem to recall that either Mr. Lawrence or his grandson owned original DVDs of 3 or the 4 works alleged to have been infringed. If that’s the case, then the MPAA is forcing Ben Rangel to lie by telling his peers that his actions were wholly illegal. We don’t know if they were or not as this matter was never pursued. Clearly if Ben or his grandfather had been attempting to hawk copies of the DVDs at the local flea market, the MPAA would have demanded more in the way of consequences, so it’s reasonable to assume that Ben’s intent was to have the works in question on the computer, so he could watch them on the computer. I’m fairly certain that the entire concept of fair use was omitted from the presentation made as part of the settlement.
For the 3 works the family already owned, this would constitute fair use and the downloads would be perfectly legitimate, not illegal. I do not believe that in the case of fair use, that one must create the actual ‘fair use’ copy themselves. It is the function to which the copy is put that determines whether or not it qualifies as fair use, not the manner in which the copy is created or obtained.
Of course, Big Content would prefer that everyone just go “huh?” when fair use is mentioned, as though it did not exist. They are working on that though, with their new “customary historic use” litany.
–TurboGeek
January 28th, 2006 at 4:37 am
Just wait til that kid hits the legal majority and sues their asses for pain and suffering inflicted on him by making him stand up and talk in front of hundreds of people. After all, courses on public speaking, and even organisations like the toastmasters wouldn’t exist if public speaking didn’t freak a lot of people out.
January 28th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
Thats all it is. Ignore it and continue downloading/uploading.
If you want safety guys, just use bittorrent/irc warez. Spread the word and make sure everyone switches from gnutella/fasttrack.
They can’t prove a thing on bittorrent/IRC muhahaha.
January 29th, 2006 at 12:58 am
Yes, Bit Torrent is much less prone to snooping and data collection than p2p schemes whereby one has to lay open one or more directories on the computer for the whole world to see. With Bit Torrent there is no direct access by any connected peer to the computer’s file system. The Bit Torrent Client manages collecting the blocks and pieces received from another peer and stores them in the proper place. The same holds true if you use a DHT (Dynamic Hash Table) enable client like Azureus that allows for trackerless operation.
It is not correct to state that a potential litigant “can’t prove a thing.” They can prove that a certain IP address was in a certain torrent on a particular day at a particular time and indicated that it was X.XX% complete. However, this information alone is insufficient to prove by the preponderance of the evidence that copyright infringement has taken place. No indication is given as to how much data and what specific data the client has uploaded, if any. Some Bit Torrent Clients that support selective downloading (snatching only a subset of the pieces in the torrent, such as 3 tracks from a 14 track album) show the pieces that have been tagged “do not download” as complete even though they are not.
Unless one is the original or only remaining seed in a torrent it’s unlikely that you would upload a complete copy of the torrent.
Due to the fragmented fashion in which Bit Torrent operates, it is far more difficult to build a compeeling case with data that can be gathered through traditional p2p snooping technique. It is far easier to build a case from situations where a complete file can be viewed all at once on one particular machine.
So far, it does not seem that Bit Torrent Users have been slapped with lawsuits. Although the ‘Sith’ case revolved around Bit Torrent, the on-line detective work was confined to snatching a copy of upload to determine it’s original source. From there, more traditional investigate methods were used that didn’t involve Bit Torrent. The people within the Bit Torrent community who have been hit with lawsuits are primarily those who ran trackers and/or torrent search sites. However, in some jurisdictions (countries) pursuit of legal action has been hampered or halted by the fact that the trackers and search sites host NONE of the material (content) that would actually infringe on copyright, only torrent files and metadata. Such is the case in Sweden where the Pirate Bay continues to operate with impugnity, despite the recent ‘reform’ of the Swedish copyright laws at the urging of Big Content.
Furthermore, if you add in an IP filter like Peer Guardian, you will decrease the chances of a ’snoop’ actually connecting to your machine as a peer. NO information about the state of your client is available to a peer in the same torrent that is NOT connected to you.
For now, Bit Torrent is a safer (but not perfect) alternative to the FastTrack/Gnutella type of p2p implementation.
–TurboGeek