A new trojan is on the loose. It doesn't install any harmful adware/spyware, but does block both mininova and the Pirate Bay.
posted by azarbayejani on Jan 6, 2009 - 26 comments

Considering DVDs seem a bit long in the tooth, this recent foray into the world of DVD ripping seemed a thinly veiled attempt to pick a fight with the MPAA. After invoking the Glaser Doctrine this morning, guess they got what they wanted. [more inside]
posted by shunshine on Sep 30, 2008 - 33 comments

Internet television host Revision3 was the victim of a denial of service attack this weekend. The source of the attack? None other than RIAA and MPAA-funded MediaDefender.
posted by mullingitover on May 29, 2008 - 27 comments

Anti-Piracy agents MediaDefender have 700MiB of juicy internal emails leaked on BitTorrent; are in trouble.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 on Sep 16, 2007 - 83 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

"For me, it's a great victory to have a big red box, the first red box in any studio feature." Move over, Todd Solondz, the previously Untitled Dakota Fanning Rape Project is headed for Sundance. This film is not yet rated.
posted by phaedon on Jan 24, 2007 - 68 comments

Permission to Innovate? How the Record Industry Is Like 17th-Century French Buttonmakers A corporate consultant blog makes a weird but compelling argument that the RIAA and MPAA are forcibly imposing a draconian 17th-century business model on the 21st century.
posted by jonp72 on Jan 13, 2007 - 45 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

The MPAA has come up with a new way to stop pirating early (PDF), let the scoutmasters drill it into the kids while their brains are still malleable. via
posted by IronLizard on Oct 20, 2006 - 32 comments

"Don't Download This Song." A free, and rather hilarious, download from "Weird Al" Yankovic done in the 'charity gospel' "We are the World" style, including a few gems in the lyrics like "even Lars Ulrich knows it's wrong." Direct MP3 link. Music video evidently coming shortly.
posted by WCityMike on Aug 22, 2006 - 35 comments

Dan Glickman, president of the MPAA, and John Perry Barlow, Greatful Dead lyricist and co-founder of the EFF, debate movie piracy in this interview (RealVideo) on the BBC's "Click".
posted by Mwongozi on Aug 20, 2006 - 17 comments

Cory Doctorow visits a Radio Shack. via keswick and MeCha
posted by loquacious on Jun 5, 2006 - 148 comments

Hong Kong court jails man for creating and posting torrents.
posted by plenty on Nov 7, 2005 - 20 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

The MPAA speaks about Emanuel Goldstein. For a very long time, the MPAA has been suing the website and magazine 2600 for posting the DeCSS source code on its website. This is a FAQ from the MPAA's homepage. The incredible irony in seeing the words "Emanuel Goldstein" mentioned brings to mind (obviously to many of you) 1984.
posted by Keyser Soze on Dec 28, 2003 - 8 comments

And the MPAA will 'up the ante' with the Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act. Increased jail time and fines for distribution of copyrighted works. And careful with that cam-phone in the theater, those and the screeners (leaked before they're commercially available) will get you the stiffest penalty.
posted by Nauip on Nov 17, 2003 - 55 comments

"I aim to close every kind of hole in the dike I can find on piracy," and with those words, MPAA demon Jack Valenti banned all DVD and VHS screeners of this years Oscar nominated films. File under "Throwing the baby out with the bathwater." Next up: Valenti plans to remove everyone's eyeballs with a rusty spoon.
posted by WolfDaddy on Oct 2, 2003 - 23 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

MPAA Blocked From Techfocus
:Effective immediately, the RIAA and MPAA will need to find another way to get to Techfocus. In response to their legal targeting of individual file-swappers, access from their known networks to this site has now been blocked. While it may still be possible for them to access Techfocus via address ranges which we're not aware of, they'll otherwise have to use non-RIAA and non-MPAA networks to view the site."
posted by metameme on Jul 20, 2003 - 34 comments

Jack Valenti (head of the Motion Picture Association of America) has been quoted numerous times recently, saying "A 12-year-old, with a click of a mouse, can send a movie hurtling to all of the five continents". A graduate researcher at MIT set to test out the accuracy of the soundbite, with interesting results.
posted by mathowie on Feb 19, 2003 - 42 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

Movie piracy 'like terrorism' The drive to protect movie copyright needed to be "as concentrated an international event as the war on terrorism", according to Star Wars producer Rick McCallum.
posted by helloboys on Nov 16, 2002 - 32 comments

Ever downloaded an episode of a tv show through gnutella or other P2P means? The MPAA may be on the lookout for you.
posted by mathowie on Jul 10, 2002 - 20 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

Hackers win round one! Feel free to post DeCSS to this thread; it is no longer illegal.
What, if anything, does this mean to the movie industry?
posted by TiggleTaggleTiger on Nov 2, 2001 - 15 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

Scary story about how the MPAA wields it's bought and paid-for DMCA. (via slashdot)
posted by skallas on Aug 23, 2001 - 8 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

Descramble DVD encryption in 7 lines of perl code ...created by 2 MIT programmers. Will the MPAA threaten to sue you if you include it in your email signature? Yah for civil disobedience.
posted by deftone on Mar 7, 2001 - 9 comments

For many days now, a mysterious splash screen at 2600.com. Is the famous Hacker Quarterly folding? Are they throwing in the towel against the MPAA? Is the site being redesigned, and moved to Canada? Is this a protest against the WBAI situation?
posted by tranquileye on Feb 25, 2001 - 8 comments

DivX + filenavigator = headaches for MPAA. Of course the SPA and RIAA can't be too pleased about filenavigator either. I've checked and the DivX of Castaway is on the net already.
posted by john on Jan 17, 2001 - 3 comments

A modern Dr Bowdler... (yeah, I know it's Salon, but...) A video-rental store in Utah offers "cleaned up" versions of modern films. First thought: is it legal? Post-DeCSS, one would think not: after all, the MPAA has done its best to protect its right to control the manner of reproduction. But are the studios not jumping to litigate, because they're happier to alienate Linux users with DVD drives than the LDS contingent in UT?
posted by holgate on Jan 11, 2001 - 31 comments

Put down that remote! The MPAA wants to equip the next generation of video recorders with copyright-protection technology, to allow broadcasters to prevent you from recording their shows.
posted by harmful on Sep 5, 2000 - 12 comments

For those of you who don't want to violate the law by linking from your website to the DeCSS source code, you can now link to a [semi-]dramatic reading of the source code (3.5MB MP3), and this semi-alternative sort of Dylanesque folk song of the code (6.3MB MP3).

And no, I'm not making *any* of this up. Thanks to Dave at The Stuffed Dog. He can't blog it, but *I* sure can. :-) [Amazingly enough, they're both pretty good, although the song is a bit over driven. ]
posted by baylink on Aug 28, 2000 - 2 comments

Is computer code a form of expression and therefore protected by the First Amendment? That's something being considered in the MPAA's case against Eric Corley and DeCSS.
posted by scottandrew on Jul 26, 2000 - 6 comments

And now, here's something we hope you'll really like...
Californian David Simon decided that It Would Be Nice If you could use the Internet like your VCR. The MPAA and the Studios disagreed. Is this guy crazy? Or crazy like a fox?
posted by baylink on Jun 27, 2000 - 8 comments

iCrave TV gets busted. And what a shame it is. People want to watch TV over their DSL and cable lines, too bad broadcasters aren't hip enough to realize that. So this small company sees the demand, builds something to fill it, and they're stopped, too bad they couldn't reach a compromise (if you've never heard of iCrave, it was mentioned here before).
posted by mathowie on Jan 31, 2000 - 2 comments

Jon Carroll has a few ideas on the Culture War in this SFGate article from June. He's right, of course.
posted by tdecius on Sep 16, 1999 - 0 comments