#mpaa

It is delicious to watch a young conservative apply conservative principles to demolish oligopolistic claptrap, even if those industries finance the campaigns of the members of Congress who pay his salary. It is sad to watch his bosses -- who never tire of railing against political correctness - place fealty to corporate elites above the spirit of intellectual inquiry.

We humbly suggest that you stand up and tell them to either embrace the age of the Internet or get out of the way so that new, forward-thinking industry leaders can take their place.

During the last year Netflix managed to outgrow BitTorrent in terms of the amount of US Internet traffic it generates. A promising finding for Hollywood as it shows that there’s an overwhelming interest for the legal movie streaming service. At TorrentFreak we wondered what might happen if all US BitTorrent users made the switch to Netflix, and the results of this exploration are quite intriguing.

Here's a story that touches on a few different issues of importance around these parts. We'll get to the details of the legal ruling in a bit, but the background is really the key part. At the beginning of 2009, a company in Valencia, California, called L&M Optical Disc West, received an order from an authorized partner of the producers of the film Milk to manufacture the DVDs of the film. They began doing exactly that. On February 2nd, as part of a supposedly unrelated police raid, police saw those DVDs and found them "suspicious." They rang up the MPAA who sent over an "investigator," who falsely declared that the DVDs were unauthorized, leading the police to seize them (though, oddly, allowing the private investigation firm to hold them) and to declare to the press that they had found "pirated" DVDs of Milk. This happened despite multiple attempts by L&M staff to explain that they had a legitimate order, even offering to show the "investigator" the details of the order.

An internal MPAA fact-sheet obtained by TorrentFreak shows that the movie industry is preparing a full-frontal attack on the business model of what they call “rogue cyberlockers”. The document summarizes how these file-hosting sites offer affiliates cash in return for signing up new premium members. According to the MPAA these practices facilitate mass-copyright infringement.

"In spite of the lack of IP protection for clothing designs—or rather, because of this lack, the authors argue—the fashion industry remains vibrant and profitable"

"Rightly so, the kid in the poster is excited as hell about it!"

"Amazon's new video-on-demand store may sound like a good idea, but once you take a look at the "agreement" you enter into by giving them your money, that changes."

"The company will take commercial DVDs and rip them for use on portable devices for $10 for 1 DVD, $20 for 3 DVDs or $30 for 5 DVDs. That is, until their legal department hears what's happening."

"The Pig and the Box is about a pig who finds a magic box that can replicate anything you put into it. "

"EFF has prepared a sample list of tough questions for times when you hear entertainment industry representatives speaking and want to challenge their positions."

"At this weekend's Motor City Comic Con, fans and vendors were abuzz about a police raid on Friday targeting the sale of illegal recordings."