MPAA Stretches For Reasons States Should Go After File Sharing Systems

from the they'll-say-anything dept

It's really quite incredible the lengths the MPAA will go through to try to stop file sharing systems, which have already been declared perfectly legal on their own. It's almost amazing they could do this with a straight face, but they spent some time trying to come up with weird interpretations of the law to convince state AGs why they should go after these systems. Their arguments are a stretch no matter how you look at them. They argue that the systems may be a threat to consumers -- so consumer protection laws should be used against them. Secondly, they claim that the sharing networks are guilty of unfair competition against local movie theaters and music stores. It appears that the industry is just pushing on every front possible, not realizing that they're doing more harm to themselves than good by trying to destroy the greatest distribution and promotion system that's been handed to them. Meanwhile, one of the P2P lobbying groups didn't do a very good job in response. Instead of pointing out how ridiculous the legal claims made by the MPAA were, he just said "now is not the time" for states to get involved, since there were plenty of federal laws that covered these issues. If the file sharing folks want to fight back against the MPAA, they really need to respond better. Explain how these legal claims by the MPAA are a joke, and how file sharing has benefits (in promotion and distribution) that could offset the negative impacts of copyright infringement.