MPAA zooms in on cell phones
p2pnet.net News:- In the world created and run by the entertainment cartels lying, cheating and blackmail are just handy tools for routine use and booze, drugs and soulless sex are an accepted, and acceptable, part of the local currency.
To maintain the status quo, the studios and labels must gain control of not just some, but all online content, and to achieve this, they’re spending literally millions of dollars on hard-core propaganda movies and PR campaigns designed to paint their own customers - children included - as vicious criminals who get out of bed every morning bent on cheating them.
For the moment he RIAA, which normally relies on so-called ‘press releass’ to get its mis- and disinformation and ‘educational’ claptrap into the media, has gone into the movie biz with the doltish Campus Downloading, while ironically, Hollywood has gone the other way, depending not on flics, but textual flim-flam to get its word out.
The obscenely rich Big Six Hollywood studios, Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, NBC Universal, Disney and Sony, are claiming they’re being ruined by kids with camcorders. And yet somehow, they never seem to want to see Sony, which makes a significant number of the devices they’re complaining about, sued as a facilitator of piracy.
Meanwhile, the latest Hollywood anti-p2p, anti-camcording farce comes in an MPA (read MPAA) press release which, boiled down, means if you own a cell phone with picture taking capabilities and you make the mistake of taking it out of your pocket in a movie house, you could be in trouble.
Hollywood’s Keystone Kops might well roust you for supposedly trying to use your phone to record a movie.
Here’s the full unexpurgated text of an August 22 MPAA masterpiece:
TAIWAN MOVIE PIRATE ARRESTED CAMCORDING THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT
MPA and Industry Training and Reward Programs Pay Off When Theater Employee Halts Pirate Theft
Hong Kong – On August 15, following a call from an employee of the Taoyuan Venice Theater in Taoyuan, a suburb of Taipei, Taoyuan County Police officers, accompanied by Motion Picture Association (MPA) Taiwan representatives, arrested a 23-year-old man attempting to illegally camcord The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift with his mobile phone.
The officers seized the phone and a memory card found by MPA representatives to contain the first four minutes of the film. An additional memory card was also seized. The man was charged with violating Taiwan’s Copyright Act and could be subject to imprisonment of up to three years and a fine of up to NT$750,000 (US$23,860).
A second illegal camcording of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift was interdicted on August 20 at the Taoyuan Venice Theater when cinema staff caught a 21-year-old man in the act of recording the movie on his mobile phone.
The man was not charged because his phone failed after he was confronted and the recording was erased.
As part of an anti-camcording program the MPA has instituted in Taiwan, the Taoyuan Venice Theater employee who spotted the illegal camcording will
receive a monetary reward for his vigilance and quick action in alerting police to the pirate’s activities.
On May 3, Taoyuan Venice Theater employees caught another would-be movie pirate illegally camcording Mission: Impossible III during its first day of theatrical exhibition in Taiwan. The 35-year-old suspect in that case was arrested and is being prosecuted. Three cinema employees received rewards in that case.
“We applaud the vigilance of the theater personnel who stopped this camcord pirate from stealing the newly released The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift,”
said Mike Ellis, Senior Vice President and Regional Director, Asia-Pacific, MPA.
“Theater employee training programs and a quick response from law enforcement helped protect not only the filmmakers’ business, but also the business of the theatrical exhibitors and home video distributors, the business of the Taoyuan Venice Theater itself, and ultimately, the jobs and livelihoods of everyone who works in the film industry.”
Pirate camcording is particularly damaging because it typically occurs at the very start of the distribution cycle, affecting the economic opportunities for the film throughout the rest of its existence. Films typically are camcorded in the first few days of their release, then distributed in digital form worldwide on peer-to-peer file-sharing networks and other online outlets. Optical disc-replication labs use the pirated films to create illegal DVDs and other optical discs, then sell the physical copies to bootleg dealers around the world.
The MPA’s Taiwan anti-camcording program, instituted in 2004, rewards theater employees who identify patrons illegally camcording a movie. Employees may be eligible for a reward for identifying a person operating a video camera or other recording device to copy a movie in a theatre, for immediately notifying the police, for stopping the camcording, and for filing a police report of the incident.
Since May 2003, Taiwanese authorities have prosecuted four pirates caught in the act of illegally camcording movies in theaters. Three pirates received jail sentences, ranging from 20 days to three months, and one case is pending.
Also See:
movie biz - RIAA video debacle, August 24, 2006
complaining about - Sony camcorder crook, July 31, 2006
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August 24th, 2006 at 9:17 pm
this is pathetic… the picture and sound quality of a cell phone or cam corder is awful. I don’t see why anyone would download such a terrible version of the film, unless they had no real intention of going to begin with. But since the relative cost of downloading a film is $0, they will download it just to check it out.
Gone are the days when you’ll convince someone to buy something simply by showing them a flashy preview, or getting a hit single. You actually have to have substance to back up your fluff, or you won’t survive. The internet has changed how we consume. Either businesses deal with it, or they go the way of the dodo
August 25th, 2006 at 9:51 am
you can buy a memory card for at leat 1GB for many phones. perhaps that will fit an entire film.
and if not, in many countries outside the CSA (criminal states of america) there is usually an intermission break when you have the time to change memory cards.
June 17th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
So am I an idiot, or this same-old, same-old?