Yippie-ki-yay, MPAA
Slashdot has a bit about the MPAA having been caught uploading fake torrents so that they can collect IP addresses of the downloaders along with ISP information. BitTorrent is a very popular technology for breaking apart files and multicast distributing them for download--in short, the most effective way to illegally download copyrighted material on the Internet today.
There's no attribution so it's difficult to tell if the story's real, but I believe it. The MPAA has been running one of the most creative scams in American business history for years. Publicly, they cry about privacy (in a non-Johnny Depp kind of way) and claim to lose over $2 billion a year from online thiefs. Privately they cut deals as fast as they can to use the technology that they're slamming as a future distribution mechanism to sell their product, ironically safe to do so because the downtrodden hackers have established a culture that knows how to do so. This is similar to Napster, who turned to the dark side as a pimp for the music industry. Warner Brothers has made a deal with BitTorrent, for instance, to sell movies over the service.
I don't buy the $2 billion figure and never have. The people that I know who are willing to watch a movie that they've downloaded onto their computer are not doing it in lieu of going to the theatre. When people decide to go out on a Friday night and see a movie, it's more about the experience anyway. If they've seen one already (say on their PC), then they'll pick another one instead--viva la Multiplex.
The MPAA has scammed and bribed Congress to support them. They've waved those flagrantly offensive Interpol messages in front of our faces everytime we watch "Dude, Where's my car?" I'd like to make these idiots have to watch a mandatory 30 second video warning that corporate espionage and shady accounting practices are illegal every time they opened the door to their office.
The war has started. The armament is encyption and the battlefield is intellectual property.
Posted on January 12, 2007
