Film88: Gone
from the that-was-mighty-fast dept
Earlier this week we mentioned the streaming movie rental site Film88.com had popped up in Iran, suggesting that it would be safe there from the MPAA - who shut down their sister site, Movie88.com. Of course, I did wonder what sort of internet infrastructure they had in Iran to support such a thing. It turns out that's a very good question, because the company's servers weren't actually in Iran (as they had claimed). They were over in the Netherlands - which is friendly with the US, and thus listened when the MPAA started screaming and yelling. End result? Film88.com has been shut down. Of course, I do think this could give people other ideas about setting up similar services in places where they're less likely to be shut down. It's not as if these companies are simply going to stop. If the movie industry had any brains, they would realize that they should have been offering a similar service three years ago.
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Does this equate to distributing porn in Iran?
I just read an article at LATimes.com about a book entitled "The
Sexual Life of Catherine M.". In the last paragraph of the review,
the author mentions an Iranian woman being stoned to death
for appearing in pornography (porn in this case being that she
showed her hair).
So, given that most of the flicks on this site were probably
popular Western movies, would the same group of religious
leaders, or even the Ayatollah, consider Film88 to be
distributing pornography? And if so, what is the punishment
they would (will?) dole out to the operators of the site, if they
choose to?
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