Essentially the MPAA wants to stop you from analog-copying stuff that is transmitted to your home, perhaps as pay-per-view, before it is released on (the proven as insecure) digital DVD format.

Some bodies argue that this is a fear that has no grounds in reality: "in the complete absence of evidence, there is no reason to believe that additional, costly, restrictive technologies are needed." TiVo and the Digital Transition Licensing Administrator also think SOC places too much control in the studio's hands, and messes with already in-place industry standards.

But the MPAA's position is clear, designed to protect revenue of the studios: "Distribution over insecure outputs would facilitate the illegal copying and redistribution of this high value content, causing untold damage to the DVD and other 'downstream' markets." The MPAA also makes an interesting twist in the argument, alleging that the fact that currently very few movies are released to broadcast before hitting DVD is "convincing evidence that the analog hole is an impediment to the early window release of high-value content."

So the people who are trying to protect the studios from piracy are saying the threat of analog copying is preventing movies getting to the TV fast... when as soon as a DVD is released, pirated copies hit the intertubes almost straight away. I am confused: does the movie exist for the audience, or the audience exist for the movie? The MPAA's not sure either, but seems to want even more control over the films we all watch. [Ars Technica via CrunchGear]

Hughes' argument centers around subscriptions: "(Recently) I made a list of the 22 ways to sell music and 20 of them still require DRM...any form of subscription service or limited play-per-view or advertising offer still requires DRM. So DRM is not dead." And he thinks subscription services are where we're headed (or at least the industry hopes so), meaning DRM for all.

But the fact that he's pinning DRM's survival on subscriptions—as opposed to advocating for it on all tracks you buy online—shows that we actually have come a long way, and DRM is dead, at least in one sense. Contrast with the MPAA's rep, whose industry is still in the beginning of the DRM life cycle: "We need DRM to show our customers the limits of the license they have entered into with us." The RIAA is a veritable Lessigian copyright hippie in comparison. [CNET]

First, it opens the door for other organizations to make demands as to what should and shouldn't be allowed. Verizon doesn't feel the internet should be excessively policed. Second, it sets a precedent that would make networks and service providers liable for future cases where they fail to block content. Third, Verizon sees content filtering as an invasion of privacy, and they try to balance the wishes of customers with the necessity for content protection. Amen. [NY Times]

To their credit, the MPAA has admitted to the mistake, saying that "We take this error very seriously and have taken strong and immediate action to both investigate the root cause of this problem as well as substantiate the accuracy of the latest report." Great, MPAA! Thanks for taking the time to stop vilifying college students as a roving pack of thieves as the RIAA loves to do. Now lets see if it changes your behavior at all, shall we? [Yahoo via Consumerist]

Like the ones protecting ISPs from getting sued because no-no content whisks through their tubes and that basically form YouTube's lifeline. He also wants to consider making content filtering mandatory, like the insane whole-network one AT&T's thinking about firing up.

Needless to say, this would make Hollywood happier than fecal-eating pigs in shit—Viacom's been fighting YouTube's safe harbor claims in its ongoing lawsuit, for instance. If the safe harbor provisions were strung out, YouTube really would be blasted out of existence, along with any other site that puts up user-generated content. Not that any of that matters more than the almighty dollar to the studios. [Ars]

The toolkit's actually a modified version of xubuntu rolled up with some network monitoring tools like Snort, which "captures detailed information about all traffic flowing across a network" and ntop, which makes pretty graphs from the data produced by Snort.

After you install it, it sets up an Apache Web server that uploads all of the data and graphs to a web page that displays "not only bandwidth usage generated by each user on the network, but also the Internet address of every Web site each user has visited." The kicker is that unless it's properly firewalled, the page is open to anyone and easily Googlable if you know the kit's URL conventions. Yet the MPAA's overview explicitly promises "No privacy issues—the content of traffic is never examined or displayed."

It gets better. The person who installs the toolkit isn't prompted to setup a user/pass to block access to the site, and the default setting is to not log outsider views of the page. Like, say, the MPAA's people. And even with the firewall blocking outsiders, tech-savvy university students can still sneak peaks.

To be fair, the MPAA's Craig Winter emphasizes

It can tell you how much traffic is going back and forth on BitTorrent [a popular file-sharing service], but it can't see what's in those files or what the names of those files are, and it doesn't communicate anything back to the Internet.

The dogs' first unlucky victims were busted at three joints in the Jamaica area of Queens: Electronic Electroshack, Leather Wholesale and Flava. Boxes of counterfeit DVDs of The Simpsons Movie; Knocked Up; The Bourne Ultimatum; Rush Hour 3; and The Invasion were stacked "floor to ceiling," according to MPAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Kaltman.

According to authorities, the arrested men were Ibrahima Diallo, 19, of Queens: Mohamed Sene, 20 of the Bronx; and Michael Williams, 20, of Queens. If found guilty of trademark counterfeiting charges, they could each face four years in prison. [Wired]

The video path basically has to be locked down at every point, and both Microsoft and Apple's OSes are required to employ "techniques of obfuscation clearly designed to effectively disguise and hamper attempts to discover the approaches used" so it's harder to hack, among other great "features."

Because they want PCs and Macs to be able to play high-def content, neither Microsoft nor Apple are in a position to tell Hollywood to take a flying fuck, either—to wit, Vista's already loaded down with it, and Apple's on the Blu-Ray board, so expect them to saddle up soon enough.

The bottom line for end users is that they're stuck with a copy protection system that's a total pain in the ass, while it devours system resources to constantly monitor the stream's "integrity." Awesome. Thanks, Hollywood. [Ars Technica, Image via Flickr]

It's not as cheap as throwing some quarters into a Salvation Army bucket—digitizing 10 minutes of film costs $110, up to 45 minutes runs $244—but supporting and preserving the arts is always a worthwhile cause. Besides, it shows the MPAA that internet+film doesn't always = piracy. [Save a Film via Boing Boing]

Basically, if a school gets enough subpoenas in the mail from the MPAA and/or RIAA to make the top 25, they go on "probation." At that point they have to prove to the Secretary of Education that they're going to foist a "technology-based deterrent to prevent the illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property" upon its hapless student body.

Naturally, provisions aren't laid out in the amendment for how the data provided by copyright holders is collected or verified at all. But it's not like the RIAA's ever been wrong or anything. [Ars Technica]

[Torrent Freak via Boing Boing]

Pursued by the newly formed COPYRIGHT ALLIANCE, composed of 29 entities, such as Viacom, Microsoft, Disney, MPAA and RIAA, pirates raced home aboard their mopeds and bicycles, custodians of cracked copies of Windows Vista and bootlegs of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, looking to save their people and restore freedom software, movies and music to the galaxy. – Matt Buchanan.

Backers of stronger copyright laws form lobby group [CNET via Techdirt]

Help Key: The Essential Guide to Piracty [CrunchGear]

The watermarks identify both the "network operator distributing the content" and the individual device. A spokesman said that people "should not be upset about this unless they are widely redistributing content." Thomson sees it as a way to "slow down piracy without limiting the use of the consumer."

So, if you feel upset or limited, that means you're a pirate. – Matt Buchanan

DSL gateways will watermark video to catch pirates [Computer World]

MPAA, you're on notice. –Adam Frucci

Best "anti-piracy" graphic EVAR [via Boing Boing]

Movie content is provided by Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros., and MGM, and will sit alongside free videos uploaded by users. Exceedingly lame, however, is that all of the studio movies are rentals only, imploding 30 days after you download one or a day after you start watching it.

New flicks go for $3.99, older ones for $2.99. TV show stuff is standard—$1.99 to buy (and keep). Since they're wrapped up in Windows Media Player DRM, you can guess where, how and on what they'll play (or not). Observation: Microsoft must be making a killing licensing their DRM to people, since most of the big digital movie distributors other than iTunes use it.

While overall I find these services to be ill-conceived, limiting and wholly unsatisfactory, if you do decide to buy crippled, overpriced content, a NYT test showed that thanks to BT's p2p setup, it took less time to download a movie than it did from Wal-Mart. Moreover, it seems to solve the issues that the Xbox 360 download service ran into on the first day.

The real question is: "Can BitTorrent compete against itself?" The BT network already offers a vastly superior catalog of content without restrictions (or cost), albeit not so legally. Something else to consider: since they're using your bandwidth to distribute content users pay for, why aren't purchases subsidized according to how much someone uploads?

Verdict: Call us when someone launches a store that offers content worth paying for. Unfortunately, Hollywood doesn't seem so keen on making that happen. – Matt Buchanan

Software Exploited by Pirates Goes to Work for Hollywood [NYT]

Apparently they need laws more like ours, where recording a movie in a theater nets you eight years of jail time on top of a $250k fine, making movie tickets in New York actually seem cheap. – Matt Buchanan

50% movie piracy from Canada: Hollywood [Canada.com via Slashdot]

"I forsee a marked deterioration in American music...and a host of other injuries to music in its artistic manifestations, by virtue—or rather by vice—of the multiplication of the various music-reproducing machines..." -John Philip Sousa on the Player Piano (1906)

"The public will not buy songs that it can hear almost at will by a brief manipulation of the radio dials." -Record Label Executive on FM Radio (1925)

More after the jump.

"But now we are faced with a new and very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the videocassette recorder." -MPAA on the VCR (1982)

"When the manufacturers hand the public a license to record at home...not only will the songwriter tie a noose around his neck, not only will there be no more records to tape [but] the innocent public will be made an accessory to the destruction of four industries." -ASCAP on the Cassette Tape (1982).

I'll add one more: "What is past is prologue." -William Shakespeare
– Charlie White

Consumer Electronics Association criticizes content industry fear-mongering [ars technica]

Granted, this is a pretty cute video. It basically talks about the broadcast flag, the RIAA suing XM radio, and the Copy Protection Ninja Chip that will eventually be embedded at the base of our spines. Cute stuff and well worth a look... unless your PC isn't keyed to watch EFF content, then you'll be sued.

Corruptables [EFF]

For the copyright industry, it is of extreme importance to keep people uninformed of the real workings of networked computers. They want to make an artificial distinction between "downloading" and "streaming", as equivalents to record distribution and radio broadcasting.

Aherm. Them's fighting words. – John Biggs

PiratByrans Speech at Reboot [Copyriot via BoingBoing.net]
PodCast [ChaosRadio]
TPB

There is a backup plan which involves moving the servers to another country, such as Russia or Holland, the SpokesPirate said.

This is pretty obvious. BitTorrent is pretty much unstoppable and TPB is a brave group of... erm... pirates? – John Biggs

The Pirate Bay is not dead [TheInquirer]

So now they're suing BitTorrent sites, which is kind of like trying to hit a fly with a stream of urine: sure, you might do some damage, but people are going to laugh at you and you're going dirty up the kitchen.

The Motion Picture Ass. of America (MPAA) will today launch a legal attack on BitTorrent users in a bid to prevent ripped DVDs being shared across the network. The lawsuit will target BitTorrent server operators, Reuters reports rather than downloaders, indicating this is less an assault on the technology and more on the people misusing it.

Good luck, guys.

UPDATE - This story is like 5,000 years old, but we still hate the MPAA.

MPAA to serve lawsuits on BitTorrent servers [TheRegister]