Tag archive: MPAA

Following in the footsteps of Louis C.K., comedian Jim Gaffigan announced today that he, too, will sell his jokes directly to fans through his website for the low cost of $5, starting in April. To sweeten the pot, Gaffigan says that for every copy of his album Jim Gaffigan: Mr. Universe sold, one dollar will go to The Bob Woodruff Foundation, a charity that aids wounded veterans and their families. “I am confident that the low price of my… Read More

According to a recent article at Public Knowledge, cables companies are pushing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reconsider a rule regarding the encryption of the basic cable tier. During the early nineties, a rule was adopted by the FCC to make sure cable companies kept a portion of the broadcast stations completely unencrypted. Commonly known as “basic cable” by the public, these stations can be accessed without the… Read More

According to a new study conducted by the NPD Group, video-on-demand and streaming video from services like Netflix were on the rise during 2011 and 31 percent of all rentals in North America are attributed to digital delivery options. Alternatively, total physical DVD and Blu-ray rentals fell by 11 percent over the year due to the decline in Blockbuster as well as flat Netflix growth. Redbox is the only bright spot in the physical rental… Read More

While a judge issued a temporary injunction against Zediva's operations during August 2011, Zediva has been officially shut down for good by U.S. District Judge John Walter as of this week. When Zediva launched earlier this year, the service streamed brand new movie releases for $2 each. Rather than negotiating any type of streaming rights with the movie studios, Zediva would purchase new releases at retail prices and incorporate… Read More

In 2009, Hotfile provided Warner Brothers with a tool that allowed the studio to expedite the Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown procedure by allowing removal of any offending file immediately. Rather than hire a team of people to police video uploaded to Hotfile, Warner Brothers used automated crawlers to submit takedown notices based off keywords. For instance, if the program was searching for “Sherlock Holmes” to remove… Read More

Back in March, DVD streaming service Zediva raised a few eyebrows when it claimed to be able to offer streaming versions of just-released DVD movies using a novel approach: customers didn't just rent the DVD remotely, they also rented a DVD player remotely, and received the output over the Internet. Zediva argued that their business model was no different than a traditional video rental store, but—unsurprisingly—the MPAA… Read More

BT, a major UK internet provider, just lost a legal battle against the Motion Picture Association in which UK's High Court ruled BT must block users from accessing a popular illegal download site. The MPA, the international arm of Hollywood's Motion Picture Association of America, was successful in their bid to get an ISP to block traffic to Newzbin2, which keeps massive listings of movies and albums available for download on… Read More

In a move supported by movie studios, record labels and the Obama administration, Internet providers have banded together to form a universal policy that imposes penalties on illegal downloads. The system allows for six strikes on an account with warning levels. The process starts with emails that require acknowledgement from the account holder. If the warnings are completely ignored, the final strikes result in decreasing Internet speed and… Read More

If you're considering uploading a movie or TV show to YouTube, go ahead and get it out of your system now, because pretty soon, such an act could land you behind bars with a felony count on your rap sheet — at least if Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) get their way. According to Ars Technica, the two Senators plan to introduce a bill that would boost the charges for streaming unauthorized content to a full-blown… Read More

Well, that didn't take long. Last month we noted the launch of Zediva, an Internet movie streaming service that took that novel approach of enabling customers to stream the freshest DVD releases renting them a physical DVD and DVD player, stored at Zediva's data center, rather than serving up a digitized version of the content. Now, the Motion Picture Association of America is suing Zediva for copyright infringement (PDF), saying… Read More

RealDVD—the $30 “legal” DVD-copying software that almost never was—is no more. Real Networks has announced a settlement with major Hollywood studios in which it agrees to stop selling RealDVD and pay about $4.5 million to cover the studios' litigation costs. It will also refund purchase prices to the 2,700 or so customers who managed to purchase RealDVD for the week or so it was actually on sale back in 2008.… Read More

Back in 2008, Real Networks promised to usher in a new era in digital entertainment with RealDVD, which claimed to offer 100 percent legal copying of DVDs for personal use so owners could enjoy them on their PCs, portable media devices, and other digital technology. Of course, it took Hollywood—in the form of the MPAA—only a short time to slam a lawsuit on RealNetworks claiming RealDVD amounted to little more than… Read More

“No two ways about it: Piracy is legally and morally wrong.” We’ve all heard it a million times. We’ve heard the analogies to walking out of a store with a CD under your jacket, sending software developers straight to the unemployment line or ripping food right out of a poor key grip’s mouth. And for some of us, we’ve even seen people we know ensnared by the law when they finally get caught gorging on free motion pictures and music. Like… Read More

Less than a week after it went on sale, a court has issued an order temporarily requiring RealNetworks to suspend distribution of its DVD-copying product RealDVD. The action comes in response to a lawsuit brought against RealNetworks by the MPAA, alleging RealDVD enables users to bypass the Content Scramble System (CSS) used to protect DVDs from unlicensed copying. RealNetworks maintains that making a copy for personal use is permissible… Read More

It turns out that movie piracy does pay – just not for the pirates, as you might expect. The MPAA’s drawn-out battle with BitTorrent search engine TorrentSpy finally came to a dramatic end this week, with a $111 million dollar judgment against the site. According to CNET, Los Angeles U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper handed the fine down to TorrentSpy owners Valence Media along with a permanent injunction… Read More