During the Golden Age of Hollywood and until 1967, mainstream movie studios were
banned by the Production Code from depicting taboo topics like drug addiction, explicit murder and venereal disease, or even showing explicit nudity. But in the 1930's and 1940's, films marketed as "educational" could and did fly under the radar, and three of the best known 'educational' propaganda exploitation films are:
Sex Madness (1935),
Reefer Madness (1936) and
The Cocaine Fiends (1938).
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Oct 15, 2012 -
30 comments
MegaUpload is currently being portrayed by the MPAA and RIAA as one of the world’s leading rogue sites. But top music stars including P Diddy, Will.i.am, Alicia Keys, Snoop Dogg and Kanye West disagree and are giving the site their full support
in a brand new song. TorrentFreak
caught up with the elusive founder of MegaUpload, Kim Dotcom, who shrugged off “this rogue nonsense” and told us he wants content owners to get paid. “
It works like an ad blocker but instead of blocking ads we show ads coming from Megaclick, our ad network,” says Kim. “
This way we will generate enough ad revenue to provide free premium services and licensed content so that our users can have it for free.”
posted by finite
on Dec 9, 2011 -
73 comments
The U.S. House of Representatives has
drafted their version of Senator
Leahy's Protect IP Act,
renaming the bill the
E-Parasites Act. Among other changes discussed
previ
ously, the bill
now makes internet service providers and websites liable for activities of their users that infringe upon copyrights, effectively overturning parts of the 13-year-old Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
posted by jeffburdges
on Oct 27, 2011 -
120 comments
Senator Leahy's
Protect IP Act would require that U.S. ISPs impose an 'internet death penalty' upon domain after merely a preliminary injunction from a U.S. court that suspects the site of being 'dedicated to infringing activities', even if the domain's owner had never been notified and was not subject to U.S. jurisdiction. There is concern that the legislation would fragment the DNS system and
facilitate DNS spoofing by
obstructing DNSSEC (
pdf). There is also an
open letter opposing the bill signed by 108 Law Professors who study intellectual property law.
[more inside]
posted by jeffburdges
on Jul 24, 2011 -
29 comments
Nearly all movie trailers shown in theaters, and on the web, come with a so-called green tag, saying they are approved for all audiences, or a red tag, saying they are approved for only restricted audiences. Since 2000, many theaters will not run red tag trailers; Warner Brothers will not make red tag trailers, and Universal Pictures has not ran one in theaters since "American Pie" in 1999. Wishing to show audiences more "edgy" previews, the producers are looking to the internet.
Rob Zombie’s
“Halloween” remake became the first to display a new yellow tag, signaling that the movie was rated PG-13 or above, and the preview was “approved only for age-appropriate Internet users” — mandatd by the
MPAA as visitors to sites either frequented mainly by grown-ups (as determined by
Nielsen's Web Demographic reports) or accessible only between 9 p.m. and 4 a.m.
This August’s
“Superbad” (autoplay music...) has an R-rated, red tag internet trailer, which MPAA regulations require a viewer to pass an age-verification test, in which the viewer 17 and older has to match their name, birthday and ZIP code against public government records on file." [
via nytimes.com]
posted by pwb503
on Jun 24, 2007 -
67 comments
This Film is Not Yet Rated (SFW trailer) and a
hilarious (audio NSFW) version.
(2:05)
"How does one follow-up an Oscar-nominated documentary (2004's Twist of Faith) about sexual abuse perpetrated by members of the Catholic Church? If you're Kirby Dick, you deliver another exposé of institutionalized misconduct by taking direct aim at the ratings system of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)." Interviews with the director, Kirby Dick:
1,
2,
3. Not available on DVD until January '07, but the Amazon
Reader Reviews are worth a look see.
posted by spock
on Nov 28, 2006 -
21 comments
Le Sigh - ShunTv joins the ranks. I found this through metafilter users.... would like to lament shun with metafilter users. As MPAA expands into
prosecuting tv viewers.
posted by sourbrew
on May 15, 2005 -
46 comments
LokiTorrent was a popular spot to get movies and they even
put up a fight against the recent crackdown, raising thousands in a legal defense fund. Today, it seems the MPAA won, forcing the owner to shut down. That's understandable and I'm not surprised, but they've gone a bit further than I expected, turning the site into a big scary ad against filesharing and warning that you're next. Even worse, the old owner is
turning the logs over to the MPAA, for them to go after folks.
posted by mathowie
on Feb 10, 2005 -
110 comments
Suprnova.org is back... with a vengeance?! It was just last week when suprnova.org, the most popular site online for finding BitTorrent downloads,
shut down their site. The MPAA and RIAA crowed, but it appears the celebration was a tad premature.
Suprnova's new site mentions
a special announcement tomorrow at 9 PM GMT on
NovaStream.org radio. Rumors suggest that it will introduce
Exeem, a decentralized, BitTorrent-driven software client that turns every user into a tracker, removing the requirement for a centralized site such as suprnova, while providing users with easy searchability, the
swarming powers of BitTorrent, and a network that is far harder to shut down.
posted by insomnia_lj
on Dec 29, 2004 -
73 comments
A threat to national security! Adam McGaughey, the owner of a Stargate fansite has been slapped with criminal charges (Criminal Copyright Infringement and Trafficking in Counterfeit Services) after being reported to the FBI by the MPAA for including Amazon links to encourage fans to purchase DVDs of the show. To build its case, the FBI invoked a provision of the USA Patriot Act to obtain financial records from his ISP. And, since he "conspired" with thousands of fans worldwide by providing these Amazon Market links, he could be facing up to 20 years in jail if the government
invokes RICO.
posted by headspace
on Jul 26, 2004 -
63 comments
AP reports that Michael Moore's upcoming film "Fahrenheit 9/11" was given an 'R' rating today by the MPAA. The same MPAA that says
violence is much more acceptable than sex. The same MPAA that has
close ties to the FCC, running roughshod over First Ammendment freedoms. The same MPAA headed by Jack Valenti who played himself in
Freakazoid! a cooky cartoon about superheroes that save Washington D.C. Email him if you disagree at jvalenti@mpaa.org or call the MPAA 818-995-6600 x396.
posted by heyadam
on Jun 14, 2004 -
84 comments
Vans Stevenson, senior lobbyist for MPAA (the Motion Picture Association of America), was the last to revise a letter California State Attorney General Bill Lockyer is to distribute to other attorney generals. Lockyer is the president of the National Association of Attorneys General. - is your government owned? Lockyer receives thousands in campaign contributions from MPAA, RIAA, and '
[via: The Register]..corporate and private donations from the major studios, including The Paramount Pictures Group, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., Warner Bros PAC, AOL Time Warner. Senior executives, such as Alan Horn and Howard Welinsky, respectively CEO and senior VP at Warner Brothers..." Adam Eisgrau of P2P United said that "the draft attributed to the attorney general's office contains many significant factual errors, eyebrow-raising metadata, and articulates a very broad expansion in several important respects of product liability and consumer protection law that would have enormous effects..' It's in
The NY Times.
Slyck has
the original document.
posted by giantkicks
on Mar 15, 2004 -
3 comments
"Movies: They're worth it!" In a move to educate those darn thieving kids and their evil P2P file-sharing networks which are used to trade ripped movies, the MPAA has launched a
public service campaign to explain, in layman's terms, why violating their copyrights is wrong. …Yes, these are the same people who have just brought us an entire summer of bloated sequels, shameless celebrity vehicles and uninspired hack-work. Respect!
posted by Down10
on Aug 3, 2003 -
81 comments
Verizon Must Reveal Internet Song Swapper In a
recent discussion of the Supreme Court's decision to protect the rights of the individual from the greed and sloth of the many I warned that the RIAA and MPAA, comically inept though the media paints them, would soon have things their way. This link is to a news report about an important step in their fight for individual rights.
posted by BGM
on Jan 21, 2003 -
23 comments
Plugging the Analog Hole.
The MPAA has released a report entitled
"The Content Protection Status Report" to the Senate Judiciary Committee, outlining it's plans to find a way to regulate Analog to Digital Converters (ADCs) with digial watermarks and "cop chips". In this short essay, Cory Doctorow outlines the main points of the new report and points out how entertainment companies are becomming the de facto regulators of new technologies.
posted by Hackworth
on May 26, 2002 -
8 comments
"We're fighting our own terrorist war," says Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America. David Rocci conters: "There's a huge difference in what people think copyright is and what the corporations think copyright is. I'm not so sure it's morally wrong for someone to go [see] 'Lord of the Rings' in the theater two or three times and then download it because they like it."
(NYT link)
posted by muckster
on Jan 17, 2002 -
11 comments
Now I Get It Ugh. Disney made the cartoon equivalent of
Hillary Rosen reading your kids a bedtime story. Perhaps succeeding episodes can explain why we should all buy DVD reissues of Disney films. Or extol the virtues of
Song of the South.
(from
Plastic)
posted by yerfatma
on Oct 24, 2001 -
12 comments
Amazon is essentially going against the will of the MPAA by
offering (followed the link from the
Thirteen Days dvd) information regarding a work around to RCE (which prevents Region 1 dvd's from being played on region free dvd players). It's funny how the MPAA has
taken 2600 to court because they posted links to DeCSS but they haven't made any moves against Amazon. CSS isn't protection against copying, it's really just used to
prevent people from importing dvd's.
posted by dave
on Jul 12, 2001 -
6 comments
