How much does it cost to monitor college students’ anti-American P2P activities? A whole lot, and that’s money colleges could be spending on, I don’t know, education.

This chart breaks down the cost of complying with, specifically, the new provisions of the Higher Education Act of 2008. That law, which the RIAA and MPAA were able to lobby their way into, requires colleges try to stem the spread of illegal P2P downloads on campus. The tools to police what students are up to exist—ipaudit is one that comes to mind—but is it really the business of colleges, realm of higher learning, to snoop on what their students are up to? Why not live and let live, punishing violations as they occur rather than spending all day playing cyber nanny?

One comment at Inside Higher Ed goes into the issue of government-sponsored censorship and prior restraint (in a sense), since the law applies to state schools as while as private schools. That’s an issue for another day, I think.

Like Achilles, it looks like RealDVD has lived a short but glorious life. Its name will echo for eternity. And so on, and so forth.

Right, so that judge that RealNetworks was so confident would rule in its favor did the exact opposite, ruling in favor of the movie studios. The temporary injunction on the sales of RealDVD will go on indefinitely; the odds of RealDVD coming back, especially before Christmastime, now look pretty gosh darn slim.

With this sentence, the judge seems to have sealed RealDVD’s fate:

I’m not satisfied that in fact this technology is not in violation of the DMCA.

That’s quite the innovative statement coming from the judge. Now all we have to do is wait for the record labels to work this line of thinking to their favor. You know, “If the judge says you can’t copy a video discs, why should you be able to copy an audio disc?”

Hooray for America.

The RealDVD saga continues, quickly becoming one of the more interesting tech stories of the past few months.

As we already know, both RealNetworks and the MPAA have been suing each other left, right and center over the past two weeks. Well now Real has issued an official statement, one sure to send shivers up the spines of the MPAA’s lawyers.

We are confident that the Court will determine that RealDVD complies with
the DVD CCA license agreement, and that it is not in violation of any
copyright laws.

From this, it does look like RealNetworks is prepared to fight this out, at least initially. Should the judge rule in the studios’ favor, who knows if RealNetworks will deem it worth all the time, money and energy to fight.

I dare ask: maybe RealNetworks created RealDVD with the knowledge that the MPAA would sue, giving it the chance to play damsel in distress. Then, we’d all feel sorry for the company, yada yada yada.

Note that I have nothing against Mr. Norris per se.

You just knew this was going to happen. Sales of RealNetworks’ RealDVD have been suspended while Real fights Hollywood in court, forever.

You already know what Hollywood’s beef is, that RealDVD allows people to illegally copy DVDs blah bah who cares. Rent, rip and retun all you want, I say.

Take this line from the MPAA’s lawsuit:

Motion pictures and television programs require substantial investments
of money, time, effort and creativity by hundreds or often thousands of
people…

Oh, please. It’s a bunch of overpaid people pretending to be other people in front of a camera, acting. No lives are saved and America’s position in the world is not enhanced. Boo hoo, Hollywood.

In yet another ridiculous and short-sighted move, “the nation’s top movie companies” have filed suit against RealNetworks due to the release of RealDVD. Oh my god. Every time I think these heads of industry can’t get any more stupid, they do something like this.

What are they going to accomplish here? They’re telling consumers that they can’t back up their own DVDs — because that’s all RealDVD can do. It’s designed to respect DRM and restrict the DVDs’ usage, and whatever your position is on that, there can be no question that the MPAA’s position should have at the very least been one of grudging acquiescence. But these dinosaurs seem hell-bent on dragging the world kicking and screaming into the last century. If it’s any consolation, in a few years they’ll be fossils.

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Joe Biden, Barack Obama’s running mate, is not your friend when it comes to technology. Well, he could well be your friend, if you’re the RIAA or MPAA.

The vice presidential nominee has sponsored bills over the year that were championed by both the music and movie industry. He was one of the main forces behind the Perform Act, which is what the RIAA used to sue XM Satellite Radio for giving its customers the ability to record songs over-the-air.

One of Biden’s bills that would have made encrypting your data much more difficult, which encouraged Phil Zimmermann to create PGP.

If this type of thing revs your engine, be sure to read CNET’s full breakdown. I know many of you couldn’t give a damn who’s president, much less vice president, (good on you, by the way), but I know that TechCrunch endorsed Obama for his views on technology, so maybe a handful of you care. If not, carry on.

If the MPAA had its way, your DVR would be nothing more than a hunk of useless metal and plastic, unable to record and pause live television. Steps are being taken to ensure that it gets its way.

The fun-loving association is pushing hard for a technology called selectable output control, or SOC, which allows content providers—movie studios and the like—to prevent material from being recorded. It does this by blocking the so-called analog hole, making it impossible for you to, say, plug in standard 3.5mm audio jack and record sound to your computer.

I know that sounds evil and all that, but the idea behind this isn’t exactly unreasonable. Movie studios want to be able to let cable companies get an earlier crack at showing movies on-demand (for example), but are worried that folks will simply exploit the analog hole and record the movie long before the studio ever releases the DVD or Blu-ray version. If consumers could copy and record movies long before their DVD date, why should the movie studios even bother to produce a DVD?

Now, that’s completely not my problem, how the movie studios make money, but at least there’s a proper reason for their policy this time around.

Note that the FCC has so far said no to SOC, so there’s still some legs in this story.

More often than not, it’s the simple explanation that makes the most sense. Commenting on a recent LA Times woe-for-the-movie-industry piece, Techdirt arrives at the stunning conclusion that people will pay to go see a good movie.

The LA Times article describes in detail the efforts that the industry took to delay The Dark Knight including shipping the movie reels in separate shipments to discourage a complete copy being lost or stolen. From production to post on through movie theater delivery, the movie was under tight security.
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This may come as a bit of a shock to y’all, but the MPAA actually has a idea to “save” the movie industry that doesn’t involve sending out John Doe letters to dumb teens. The association is launching a Web site (no release date yet, ‘fraid) that will help folks find legitimate sources of movies. You know, iTunes, Xbox Marketplace, Netflix, etc.

It’s 2008. Good to see the MPAA get with the program.

That the MPAA assumes that folks don’t know the difference between going to the Pirate Bay and going to iTunes should just be ignored.

Good luck to the MPAA and its newfangled “Web site.” About time these guys get their act together.

via Ars Technica

The MPAA may have some explaining to do following remarks of one of its lawyers in the Jammie Thomas trial. The remark in question, as written by Marie. L. van Uitert:

It is often very difficult, and in some cases, impossible, to provide such direct proof when confronting modern forms of copyright infringement, whether over P2P networks or otherwise; understandably, copyright infringers typically do not keep records of infringement

In other words, the MPAA shouldn’t have to provide “direct proof”—it’s pesky!—when suing old ladies, dopey college kids and John and Jane Does for as much as $150,000 per copyright violation.

How does that make sense, in human terms? Never mind the $150,000 per copyright violation—movie tickets are, what, $10 these days?—but the MPAA believes it should be able to extract such funds merely because, you know, it’s “difficult” to prove any wrongdoing? Stunning.

How old and unreasonably rigid is our legal system that this type of thing can be taken seriously?

Oh now I’m all worked up again.

via TorrentFreak

Sad news, folks. Manny, a dog trained to sniff out pirated DVDs, has died in Malaysia. The AP is reporting that the dog “died of an unknown cause” and that Malaysian authorities don’t suspect foul play, but then added that two other dogs that helped uncover 1.6 million pirated DVDs last year “reportedly caused movie pirates to place a bounty on their heads.” I’m no cop but there’s your suspicion of foul play, officers.

Apparently the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) owns a few of these dogs and lends them out to various governments to help crack down on piracy. Although the dogs “cannot distinguish between real and pirated DVDs,” they’re able to help officers find counterfeit discs hidden in areas suspected to contain such items. 

The Motion Picture Association of America wants to release movies to TV, pay-per-view, on-demand, and premium movie channels before releasing them for sale on DVD. Sounds good, no? There’s a little catch, though. The MPAA wants to block these early releases from being recorded on your DVR.

Traditionally, new movies get released into theaters, then get shown on airplanes and in hotels, then are made available on DVD and over the Internet, then on-demand/pay per view, then premium movie channels like HBO, and finally to regular broadcast TV. The whole cycle typically takes about three years. Well, the industry now wants to get its movies onto people’s televisions a whole lot sooner, before the movies are released on DVD, even.

The problem, however, is that the MPAA is asking that the FCC allow it to selectively block high-definition movies from being recorded on our DVR systems. This process is called Selectable Output Control, and is currently restricted by the FCC, and, according to Ars Technica, “The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) wants a waiver on that restriction in the case of high-definition movies broadcast prior to their release as DVDs.”

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I knew that printers could copy documents but can they really copy Iron Man? Researchers at the University of Washington were doing some tests to suss out BitTorrent traffic on their local network when they found a way to spoof traffic from certain IP addresses. After spoofing two printers on their network, the printers received DMCA notices from the MPAA for sharing files like Iron Man and the new Indy movie.

Their goal was to force the MPAA to open up their search systems to scrutiny, something they will never, ever do.

“Our study scientifically shows that flaws exists,” said Mr. Kohno, an assistant professor in the university’s Computer Science and Engineering department. “It’s impossible to prove that other flaws don’t exist, especially since current industry practices are so shrouded in mystery. Ultimately, we think that our results should provide a wake-up call for more openness on the parts of content enforcers.”

Go ahead and tell me that New York isn’t over. The city will be plastering subways with anti-piracy flyers throughout the summer, telling people, essentially, not to copy that floppy. Harried New Yorkers and in-the-way tourists will be treated to mock movie ratings, like the kind seen here. Instead of “R” and “PG” we’ll be seeing “RO” and “F” for “ripped off” and “f,” respectively.

Keep in mind that this is more about on-the-street piracy than cruising The Pirate Bay for DVD rips of Cloverfield, which, I must say, was probably the worst movie I’ve ever seen.

Meanwhile, the MPAA says nearly 23,000 people have lost their jobs because of piracy, which also caused a $903m loss last year. I… don’t believe that stat. That’s just me, though.

Usenet appears to be the MPAA’s next target. Not good.

The MPAA has told Newzbin, a popular Usenet indexing service and creator of the NZB file format, that it’s hosting copyright-infringing material, material that needs to be removed post-haste. Never mind that NZB files themselves aren’t copyright-infringing (though I doubt the courts would make that distinction), but such is the world we live in.

By the looks of it, Newzbin seems to be complying with the MPAA’s demands. It made a statement saying it doesn’t “condone” the posting of copyright-infringing material, and has hinted that it will remove such material and ban offending accounts.

A few months ago, the RIAA targeted a prominent Usenet provider, so going after enablers like Newzbin was the next logical step.

My advice? Leech off Usenet while you stile can.

via TorrentFreak