92 year old bootlegs movies, sends them to troops overseas because he just doesn't give a fuck about the MPAA
While the MPAA goes after people for downloading ripped theater vids of Twilight, 92 year old Hyman Strachman has been churning out shitloads of DVDs of first run movies to send to American troops overseas. Because he’s old and he’s doing it for the troops, so the MPAA can suck it.
Let's destroy a blockbuster.
Chris Dodd’s statements about the blackout yesterday got me thinking.
These huge media distributors got so big making money from us. Money we paid for the entertainment they distribute. Money they in turn are trying to use to influence laws that would censor our internet and push far too harsh punishments on individual citizens.
Just as I was thinking about the irony of this, I came across a thread on reddit that said we should black out the MPAA and not go to the movies for a weekend.
A comment on the thread suggested it might be more effective take a movie that’s expected to be a blockbuster and make it bomb.
It wouldn’t be that difficult of a task, opening weekend is very important to the movie industry. They put a lot of money into marketing, advertising campaigns and the production of the movie it’s self.
Why not remind them where their money (that they are using to influence legislation) comes from.
I’ve seen a few suggestions for blacking out the new Batman move, if we could get people to stay home opening weekend it would go a long way to hitting them in the pocket book, the only thing these big media distributors care about.
Check out the thread on reddit here, and reblog if you have any suggestions on how to mobilize this… operation to kill the Batman and remind big media where their fortunes came from.
“Over and over again in “Bully,” we see adults who feel bureaucratically paralyzed, who look the other way, who are unwilling to make judgments between perpetrators and victims, or who actively condone vicious and sadistic behavior as the Darwinian natural order of childhood. In many cases you can feel considerable sympathy for these people. After all, the schools must try to educate bullies as well as victims (and the latter often turn into the former), the distinction between normal horseplay and bullying can be hard to parse, and no adult can protect a child from all possible harm. Declaring that underage kids can’t even see this film without a grown-up to hold their hands, however, falls somewhere near the nastier end of that spectrum of indecision. With the stated goal of not offending anybody, the MPAA has essentially told the bullied teens in the movie and outside it — gay and lesbian kids, autistic kids, disabled kids, fat kids and nerds and Goths and plain old weird kids who don’t fit in — that their very existence is too upsetting for normal kids to see, and they should crawl back under their rocks.”
—Why the MPAA doesn’t want your kid to see “Bully” - Salon.com
MPAA Responds to SOPA Protests
mpaa.orgThe following is a statement by Senator Chris Dodd, Chairman and CEO of the Motion
Picture Association of America, Inc. (MPAA) on the so-called “Blackout Day” protesting anti-piracy legislation:
“Only days after the White House and chief sponsors of the legislation responded to the major concern expressed by opponents and then called for all parties to work cooperatively together, some technology business interests are resorting to stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns, rather than coming to the table to find solutions to a problem that all now seem to agree is very real and damaging.
It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.
A so-called “blackout” is yet another gimmick, albeit a dangerous one, designed to punish elected and administration officials who are working diligently to protect American jobs from foreign criminals.
It is our hope that the White House and the Congress will call on those who intend to stage this “blackout” to stop the hyperbole and PR stunts and engage in meaningful efforts to combat piracy.”
tell me again: who are the criminals here?
Wil Wheaton blogged today about the MPAA directly threatening those politicians who came out against SOPA:
”Reinforcing the fact that Chris Dodd really does not get what’s happening, and showing just how disgustingly corrupt the MPAA relationship is with politicians, Chris Dodd went on Fox News to explicitly threaten politicians who accept MPAA campaign donations that they’d better pass Hollywood’s favorite legislation… or else:“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,”
It shows, yet again, that he just doesn’t get it. People were protesting not just because of the content of these bills, but because of the corrupt process of big industries like Dodd’s “buying” politicians and “buying” laws. To then come out and make that threat explicit isn’t a way to fix things or win back the public. It’s just going to get them more upset, and to recognize just how corrupt this process is.”
Shortly after Chris Dodd made the statements, a petition was started to investigate whether the MPAA has engaged in bribery. Others are pointing out that as a recent Senator, Chris Dodd is not allowed to lobby until 2013 (or 2 years after leaving office).
SOPA blackouts begin as MPAA calls foul
extremetech.comCurrent MPAA president and thirty-year senator Chris Dodd further blasts the blackout as a stunt that punishes the users of the aforementioned services or turns them “into corporate pawns.” He decries the decision to protest as “an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today” and claims that online information services are “intentionally skew[ing] the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.”
There are times in this job when irony and ignorance fuse together to form a black hole of stupidity that no journalist, however highbrow, can escape. This is one of those times. Here we have the president of an organization notorious for buying campaign votes declaring that Wikipedia and Reddit users are in the pockets of huge corporate interests.
Pause and consider that a moment.
No really. Pause. Consider.
“The movie and music industry think pirates are criminals and parasites who cost both industries billions of dollars in lost sales. In order to prove this fact a number of studies have been commissioned to help demonstrate the effect a pirate has on sales of entertainment. GfK Group is one of the largest market research companies in the world and is often used by the movie industry to carry out research and studies into piracy. Talking to a source within GfK who wished to remain anonymous, Telepolis found that a recent study looking at pirates and their purchasing activities found them to be almost the complete opposite of the criminal parasites the entertainment industry want them to be. The study states that it is much more typical for a pirate to download an illegal copy of a movie to try it before purchasing. They are also found to purchase more DVDs than the average consumer, and they visit the movie theater more, especially for opening weekend releases which typically cost more to attend.”
—Suppressed Report Shows Pirates Are Good CustomersWhy the movie industry can't innovate, and the result is SOPA
businessinsider.com
- 1920’s – the record business complained about radio. The argument was because radio is free, you can’t compete with free. No one was ever going to buy music again.
- 1940’s – movie studios had to divest their distribution channel – they owned over 50% of the movie theaters in the U.S. “It’s all over,” complained the studios. In fact, the number of screens went from 17,000 in 1948 to 38,000 today.
- 1950’s – broadcast television was free; the threat was cable television. Studios argued that their free TV content couldn’t compete with paid.
- 1970’s – Video Cassette Recorders (VCR’s) were going to be the end of the movie business. The movie businesses and its lobbying arm MPAA fought it with “end of the world” hyperbola. The reality? After the VCR was introduced, studio revenues took off like a rocket. With a new channel of distribution, home movie rentals surpassed movie theater tickets.
- 1998 – the MPAA got congress to pass the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), making it illegal for you to make a digital copy of a DVD that you actually purchased.
- 2000 – Digital Video Recorders (DVR) like TiVo allowing consumer to skip commercials was going to be the end of the TV business. DVR’s reignite interest in TV.
- 2006 - broadcasters sued Cablevision (and lost) to prevent the launch of a cloud-based DVR to its customers.
- Today it’s the Internet that’s going to put the studios out of business. Sound familiar?
“Those who count on quote 'Hollywood' for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who's going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don't ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don't pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.”
—MPAA head (and former U.S. Senator) Chris Dodd speaking to Fox News (as noted by Hillicon Valley).
I mean, he actually said this.
In one soundbite, he’s both threatening any and all U.S. politicians and implying that they’re corruptible. It’s a statement that so egregious, it’s hard to think of anything worse he could have said. Maybe: “if these guys don’t start supporting whatever we say, I’m going to hire some goons to fucking kneecap the bastards”.
But actually, that’s not worse. Because that doesn’t imply the politicians accept bribes (in the form of lobbying money) to support issues.
This is much, much worse than Dodd’s assclownish statement the other day. And it also shows that Dodd really, truly does not understand what’s going on — why people are so upset about these bills and the subsequent reaction to them, as Mike Masnick lays out perfectly.
Amazingly, this discussion is morphing beyond the destruction of the fabric of the Internet and into the underlying notion that our political system is fundamentally corrupt.
The MPAA should fire Chris Dodd immediately. Of course, they won’t — because in a year (when he’ll be far enough removed from his Senate term to officially lobby) he’ll be the best lobbyist ever. At that point, he’ll be able to do it behind the scenes (with people he served alongsides for decades), and not with fucked up statements like this.
