Hollywood Applauds The Destruction Of The Public Domain... Even As Hollywood Exists Thanks To The Public Domain

from the strong-copyright-isn't-what-got-you-here dept

With the Supreme Court hearing the rather important Golan case this week, concerning the ability of the federal government to take works out of the public domain and put them under copyright, there is actually some mainstream press discussion about the public domain. The NY Times is running a great op-ed piece by Peter Decherney, a film studies professor, talking first about how devastating it's been for filmmakers like him to have works they previous relied on in the public domain suddenly shift to being covered by copyright.

In my own field — film — the effects of the 1994 law have been palpable. Distributors of classic foreign films have seen their catalogs diminished. Students can no longer get copies of many films. Archivists have postponed the preservation of important films. And of course filmmakers have lost access to works of literature that they might have adapted and music that might have enhanced soundtracks.

But the key point is made towards the end of the opinion piece, in which he notes the blatant hypocrisy on the part of the MPAA, who filed an amicus brief in the case arguing that we need to pull works out of the public domain to show the world that the US is "a proponent of strong copyright protection throughout the world."

But, as Decherney points out, all of that is hogwash especially since the very same movie industry that's complaining about this has always relied on the public domain as a source for new works:

But history tells a different story. Filmmakers have consistently used public domain works to anchor artistic and technological innovation. In the 1930s, when Walt Disney decided to make one of the first feature-length animated films, he turned to the Brothers Grimm’s version of the tale of Snow White. When asked why he chose that story, Disney explained that “it was well known.” He understood that “Snow White” was a trusted property, and because he knew that at least the story and characters would be familiar to audiences, he could take an artistic risk with the form.

Disney is only the most famous example of a filmmaker who relied on the public domain to expand the art of film. Starting with Thomas Edison in 1910, filmmakers have adapted Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” in movies that have accompanied the transition to feature films, the establishment of the studios, the switch to sound, the introduction of color, the advent of television and the adoption of widescreen aspect ratios.

And yet, now, works that formerly were in the public domain -- and which some people made a business of selling -- have been removed from the public domain and placed back under copyright law that they don't need. This should be seen as a huge problem with the system and the industry.

Filed Under: copyright, culture, golan, public domain, supreme court
Companies: mpaa

Former 'Anti-Piracy Investigator' Explains How He Fed Police Cases, Inflated 'Piracy' Stats

from the but-of-course dept

None of this will come as much of a surprise, but a former "anti-piracy" private investigator who worked for the MPAA's anti-piracy shell operation in Australia, AFACT, has explained to Torrentfreak how he helped inflate "piracy" numbers, was used to imply a non-existent link between infringement and drug trafficking, and how he basically handed police targets for raids. The guy was focused on physical counterfeiting of movies, and actually lost his job as the MPAA/AFACT started focusing more on online, rather than physical. But, still there are some tidbits that highlight pretty much how the MPAA twists things:

"He was adamant that we needed to boost our statistics to make the media sit up and take notice and that the large numbers would make it easier to get the local Police interested. This was especially difficult to do as local police had no jurisdiction over copyright infringing product and the AFP were desperately short on manpower. We were encouraged to find links to drugs and stolen goods wherever possible."

"We discussed the formula for extrapolating the potential street value earnings of 'laboratories' and we were instructed to count all blank discs in our seizure figures as they were potential product. Mr Gane also explained that the increased loss approximation figures were derived from all forms of impacts on decreasing cinema patronage right through to the farmer who grows the corn for popping."

[....]

"Funded solely by MPAA, AFACT lobbies hard for changes to Australian law and enhance the sexiness of their case by making vague references to links to terrorism. Sometimes not so vague. I was instructed to tell police officers that the profit margins were greater than dealing heroin. It was bizarre. A twisted logic that AFACT spewed out with monotonous regularity," Warren says.

One of the examples Warren gives is that they assumed that all burners and DVD replicators would run 24/7, making these operations appear very lucrative.

"Each burner cranking out ten discs an hour, multiplied by ten dollars per disc is potentially a hundred dollars an hour, multiplied by number of burners by hours in a year gives a yearly potential…. Very pumped up statistics."

There's a lot more in the story -- none of which is particularly surprising, but just interesting to see someone who was there come out and admit what most people knew already.

Filed Under: anti-piracy, australia, stats
Companies: afact, mpaa

NYC/NBCUniversal Pro-Copyright Propaganda Contest For School Kids: Facts Not Allowed And Your Rights Don't Count

from the that-doesn't-seem-right dept

There has been plenty of concern recently about companies sneaking their own marketing material or one-sided corporate propaganda into schools. And while some may differ on how big a problem this is, I think most people would agree that a local government shouldn't be aiding the process -- especially without revealing the corporate sponsor. And yet, that appears to be exactly what New York City is doing. And, to make it even more ridiculous, they're doing so by putting forth a corporate-sponsored contest about the importance of copyright... and hiding in the fine print that by entering the contest, you may be giving up your own copyrights.

You may recall that, last year, New York City began running a dreadfully misleading (and at points downright false) ad campaign to try to "stop piracy in NYC." At the time, we suspected that the campaign was really put together by NBC Universal, and the city did nothing at all to check the veracity of the claims used in the PSA. It later took a freedom of information request to the city to reveal that, indeed, the StopPiracyInNYC video campaign was actually "owned" by NBC Universal.

We were troubled to learn that the Federal Government, in the form of Homeland Security's ICE division, had also started using the same videos, never once mentioning that they were NBC Universal's videos. That's troubling enough, but it's even worse to find out that New York City has ratcheted up the campaign, still using the same NBC Universal video with false claims in it, and going into city high schools and colleges, asking students to create their own bogus propaganda video that repeats NBC Universal and the MPAA's debunked talking points.

In fact, the contest rules (in the smallest print possible) make it clear that if you produce a video that provides actual facts about how piracy has not harmed the industry -- but a failure to adapt has -- then your video won't be considered. Every entry will be given a series of points, and the single biggest point category is if the video "clearly advocates against digital piracy and content theft." So if you make a video that advocates that NBC Universal and the other major studios stop whining and start embracing new business models, well, too bad. You're out of luck. This isn't about truth. This is about corporate propaganda in NYC schools, sponsored by the city.

If you dig into the actual "rules" (pdf) for the contest (which are quite buried on the site, but are embedded below), you discover some interesting tidbits. While nowhere on the contest website does NYC admit that NBC Universal is the real sponsor behind this campaign, you do find that information buried in the rules. The rules make it clear that this is a joint project of NYC and NBCUniversal, along with some design agencies.

And, um, must we point out the seeming irony that this video contest is supposed to be about promoting the importance of the protection of copyright... but in order to enter, you agree to completely give up your ability to assert your own copyright?

All Submissions become the property of the Sponsor and will not be acknowledged or returned.... BY MAKING A SUBMISSION, ENTRANT ACKNOWLEDGES THAT HIS/HER SUBMISSION MAY BE POSTED ON SPONSOR’S WEB SITE, AT SPONSOR’S DISCRETION. Making a Submission grants Sponsor and its agents the right to publish, use, adapt, edit and/or modify such Submission in any way, in any and all media, without limitation, and without consideration to the entrant.

Oh, but that's not the best part. You see, if you win, you have to agree to turn over the copyright, and admit that this video is a "work made for hire" under copyright law, so you can't ever use termination rights to get it back:

By accepting a prize Winner (and Winner’s parent or legal guardian if Winner is an eligible minor) agrees that his/her Submission will be deemed a Work Made For Hire under the Copyright laws of the United States, but if it cannot be so deemed, then Winner irrevocably assigns and transfers to Sponsor all of his/her right, title and interest in and to his/her Submission, including all but not limited to all copyright and trademark rights which he or she may have, in the United States and worldwide, therein, for consideration, the receipt and sufficiency of which is hereby acknowledged. Winner hereby waives in favor of Sponsor, all rights of “Droit Moral” or “Moral Rights of Authors” or any similar rights or principles of law that winner may now or later have to his/her Submission. Sponsor reserves the right to alter, change or modify Winner’s Submission, in its sole discretion. Upon request of Sponsor, Winner (and Winner’s parent or legal guardian if Winner is an eligible minor) shall execute and deliver such additional instrument of assignment (“Assignment”), as may be solely deemed by Sponsor, reasonably necessary to establish the ownership of record of the right, title and interest in and to the Submission and of the copyrights transferred and “Moral Rights of Authors” waived under these Official Rules. Should Sponsor fail to request Assignment as stated, that shall not be deemed a waiver of Sponsor’s rights and Sponsor may at a later time request Assignment.

In other words, the real message of this "contest" is that you should create a video about respecting copyrights... and if you do so, we'll trample all over your copyrights.

Anyway. The grand prize for this is a mere $500. We must be able to do better than that as a community. If anyone is interested in contributing to a fund to create a "competing" contest, hit us up over email, and we'll see if we can offer a better prize for a more truthful contest...

Filed Under: contest, copyright, new york city, propaganda
Companies: mpaa, nbc universal

MPAA Shuffles The Deck Chairs

from the same-faces,-same-disastrous-policies dept

Just a month or so after the RIAA reshuffled management, and promoted the folks who had driven the recording industry off a cliff to give them even more power, it looks like the MPAA is doing the same. Chris Dodd, who waited mere weeks before breaking his promise not to become a lobbyist after leaving the Senate and joining the MPAA (welcome to Hollywood, where giving your word on something is entirely meaningless), has lined up his new leadership team... and it's more of the same. The same people making the same bad decisions, taking the MPAA down the same disastrous road as the RIAA before it.

The key player here is Michael O'Leary, who was already a VP, but will take on an expanded role. You may recall O'Leary from his laughable attempt to pretend that censoring the internet via PROTECT IP is part of the American way.

What's really sad is that if either of these organizations actually brought in folks with a tiny bit of insight into where the opportunities are actually happening in their world today, we might actually see some progress, rather than the tactic of pretending that you can break the internet to save the business models of a few legacy companies who don't want to bother innovating. I have to admit that I have trouble understanding the minds of people who seek to hold back progress and prop up dead business models, but apparently it pays well for the time being.

Filed Under: chris dodd, michael o'leary, staff
Companies: mpaa

Hollywood Ups Three Strikes Propaganda Campaign In Australia With Misleading Stats

from the but-of-course dept

For a variety of reasons, the MPAA chose Australia as the testing ground for its effort to force ISPs to implement a three-strikes type provision. And make no mistake about it, it was the MPAA -- driven by Hollywood -- that was involved. While the anti-piracy group in Australia, AFACT, wanted to pretend it was an Australian effort, some leaked cables have shown otherwise. The effort focused on picking on one particular ISP, iiNet, which was chosen because it wasn't too big (so didn't have as much money) and wasn't too small (so people noticed). The charges? iiNet failed to wave a magic wand and stop piracy without convictions. iiNet turned out to be the wrong target for a number of reasons, including the fact that the CEO had no problem responding clearly and in an outspoken manner that if there's no legal proof of illegality, it did not seem right to cut someone off. Tragically for the MPAA, the courts have agreed with iiNet.

But, the MPAA is nothing if not persistent in their global desire to blame everyone else for their member studios' unwillingness to adapt. Even after the loss, the MPAA has been threatening more ISPs, and has now released a highly questionable study, laundered through a few organizations of course, from a company that doesn't appear to exist other than to push out MPAA propaganda. The study attempts to show that a three strikes regime would decrease infringement by over 70%. The only problem? The actual data doesn't seem to support that at all, because it includes asking people who don't file share at all how they would react to receiving a "strike." If you don't file share and someone says you'll receive a strike and potentially lose your broadband, you're pretty likely to say you won't keep file sharing. No sweat off your back, since you weren't already. And, even then, the numbers don't really support the MPAA, because a higher percentage of people said they'd keep file sharing than said they were file sharing in the first place! From TorrentFreak:

If 72 percent say they would stop sharing after a warning, then 28 percent didn’t agree with this statement. And since only 22 percent of the people said they used file-sharing software in 2011 (the only people who would be affected by a three strikes system), this means that warnings from ISPs wouldn’t even deter people who aren’t the target of this system in the first place.

Or put differently, it could very well be that none of the 22 percent file-sharers indicated that they would stop doing so when notified by their ISP.

Hell, if you wanted to be silly, it would be entirely possible to read this study to suggest that sending a strike encourages more people to file share...

Filed Under: australia, propaganda, three strikes
Companies: mpaa

MPAA: Bad At Math & Bad At Economics

from the sigh dept

We recently noted that the MPAA was passing around a silly infographic chock full of bogus stats, and pointed out that someone had noticed that if you took the MPAA's "losses" claim seriously, it would mean that downloaders were buying 200 more DVDs per year. The MPAA folks were apparently not happy that people called them on their misleading stats, and have come out with a statement, which it claims is about "correcting the record."

If only that were true. Instead, we get more misleading bunk from the Masters of Propaganda.

First off, the MPAA admits that perhaps (just perhaps) their original graphic may have been a little misleading, and have put out a new version that moves away from implying that they were losing $58 billion, and now merely suggests that it's the US economy that loses this much money from the combined infringement on movies, music, packaged software and video games. This is complete and utter bunk -- and the MPAA folks either know this and are lying... or they're idiots. Take your pick.

The $58 billion claim comes from a study from The Institute for Policy Innovation that has been debunked so many times over, the fact that the MPAA would even bring it up is a laugh. And it's based on a very questionable analysis of the broadly defined "copyright industry." Of course, as we've noted in the past, the definition of "the copyright industry" for such studies includes all sorts of goods and services that do not rely on copyright at all, but are force-lumped into this study. So, if we're talking about actual products that rely on copyright, you probably have to ratchet down the scale by an order of magnitude. And that's just to start. From there, you have to realize that IPI's numbers use completely bogus math.

Tim Lee did an excellent job explaining the economic and mathematical fallacies of their methodology years ago (for which IPI kindly tried to get him fired from his job). The key issue is how the IPI counts "losses."

In IPI-land, when a movie studio makes $10 selling a DVD to a Canadian, and then gives $7 to the company that manufactured the DVD and $2 to the guy who shipped it to Canada, society has benefitted by $10+$7+$2=$19. Yet some simple math shows that this is nonsense: the studio is $1 richer, the trucker is $2, and the manufacturer is $7. Shockingly enough, that adds up to $10. What each participant cares about is his profits, not his revenues.

Furthermore, in IPI and MPAA fantasy-land, dollars not spent on movies simply disappear from the economy. And yet, anyone can tell you that's simply not true. That money continues to be spent elsewhere, and plenty of studies have shown that, despite growing infringement online, the amount of money that individuals spend on entertainment continues to rise.

So why would the MPAA rely on this number, which is so obviously false? Because it doesn't care about the truth or accuracy or "correcting the record." The MPAA's job is to get Congress to pass laws that divert money from what the market wants to its legacy studios who are slow to adapt. So it will use any number it can get its hands on, no matter how ridiculous. It's just that this time it got called on it, so it had to scramble to try to make the number look even a little bit legit...

Filed Under: economics, losses, stats
Companies: ipi, mpaa

MPAA Mocks Entrepreneurs For Being Concerned About MPAA's Efforts To Stifle Innovation

from the of-course-they-do dept

As a who's who list of top tech entrepreneurs have come out against PROTECT IP, noting how it will stifle innovation and limit their ability to create jobs, it's no surprise (no surprise at all), that the MPAA's propaganda machine felt the need to get cranking on the sophistry to try to mock the very real concerns of a large group of entrepreneurs. The MPAA's Alex Swartsel -- last seen attacking reporters for accurately predicting the same thing that the MPAA predicted -- has put up a post mocking the many entrepreneurs who wrote and signed the letter, claiming that they did not read the bill.

First, she attacks the claim that the definitions in the bill are vague, by insisting that PROTECT IP is written "so narrowly focused that it covers only websites whose sole purpose is to provide or point to stolen content." Right. But, if Swartsel is going to claim that the entrepreneurs didn't read the bill, then the very least she could have done was to have actually read our letter. In it, we explain, quite clearly, the history of folks like the MPAA, insisting that pretty much every new technology's "sole purpose is to provide or point to stolen content." Need I remind the MPAA that their fearless leader, and the guy whose name sits on the building they now work from once said:

"I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."

Forgive tech entrepreneurs building new platforms to allow for better distribution, promotion and monetization of films for worrying about which of them is going to be declared the next "Boston Strangler."

And, let's notice that Swartsel fails to mention that when MPAA members Warner Bros. and Paramount were asked to help create a list that named sites dedicated to infringement, as per the vague definition above, that it included sites like The Internet Archive, as well as some of the key platforms used by artists today, like SoundCloud and Vimeo. Boston Stranglers, all of them.

Next up, she mocks the idea that tech startups might face any legitimate "burdens" from PROTECT IP. And then follows that up by listing out some of the very burdens that we would face under the bill -- including very vague rules about "reasonable measures" that tech companies will have to take to stay in compliance. And what she leaves out is that the MPAA and people like Swartsel are the ones who think they get to define what's reasonable here.

Want proof? Looks no further than EMI insisting that it gets to decide if MP3tunes is in compliance with the DMCA. Or MPAA-member Viacom suing YouTube for a billion dollars, claiming that it was not in compliance with the DMCA because it didn't magically figure out how to block all infringing content. And, really, just look at how much time, effort and money have gone into those two lawsuits alone. The entrepreneurs who signed the letter know that when the MPAA comes to sue, saying that their efforts didn't meet its definition of "reasonable," they're about to end up in court for years, and have to pay millions of dollars to do so.

I'm sorry, Ms. Swartsel, but to a new startup building the next great platform, having to spend millions of dollars and a few years in court is a significant burden that can put many out of business. Just ask Veoh and ReplayTV -- two companies that were, in fact, effectively put out of business by similar lawsuits. Until Ms. Swartsel has to sit in front of her investors and explain to them why we have to spend the money they gave us fighting the MPAA in court, rather than building the next great platform, I'm not really sure she's in a position to comment.

Next up, she claims that the arguments of Paul Vixie, on how PROTECT IP will break key parts of the internet and damage internet security have been "debunked." That's just funny. By "debunked" she means that the MPAA put out a silly statement that effectively said, "hey, if we break the internet, you smart tech people should just go fix it again."

Finally, she does the typical "but think of the starving artist" argument, by calling out Jason Stall and Ellen Seidler, the two poster children for the MPAA for filmmakers who complain about piracy, but fail to actually put in place smarter business models. It's silly to get into a pissing match over this, but why don't we look at filmmakers like Kevin Smith who has pointed out that fans downloading his films "leads to converts," and he then does amazing things to give those converts all sorts of reasons to buy -- such as by using the awesome TopSpin platform. Need we mention that TopSpin's CEO, Ian Rogers, signed the letter worrying about PROTECT IP? Or how about all of the movies currently being funded by Kickstarter, often raising much more money than they would have received otherwise. Andy Baio, who helped build KickStarter, is among those who signed the letter as well.

These entrepreneurs are very reasonably concerned. They're the ones who are actually powering the next generation of fillmmakers and helping them make money. They're not whining about "piracy," but are focused on utilizing these new platforms, the same platforms that the MPAA wants to burden the next time MPAA member studios decide to put them on a list...

If the MPAA was really concerned about filmmakers, it would help them embrace these new platforms that help them make money. Not line them up in a witchhunt for new Boston Stranglers.

Filed Under: entrepreneurs, innovation, protect ip, startups
Companies: mpaa

MPAA's Bogus 'Piracy' Numbers Mean It Thinks Downloaders Would Buy 200 More DVDs Per Year

from the fictional dept

Over the years we've had plenty of fun with the MPAA's bogus use of stats when it comes to "piracy" claims. They're really laughable, and it would actually be kind of funny... if policy makers and the press didn't actually believe those numbers and pass bad legislation based on them. Even the one time that the MPAA admitted its piracy stats were totally wrong, it was too late to stop a law that was passed on the basis of those bogus numbers.

Now, you may have seen an MPAA inforgraphic (pdf) that's been making the rounds for a couple weeks now. It's so chock full of debunked stats, they should throw themselves a party for how much falseness they can shove into a single graphic. Going through and debunking the various numbers yet again (most have already been debunked in the past) didn't seem worth it, but furdlog points us to a wonderful debunking on a movie review site, where someone actually does the math, and realizes that if the MPAA's numbers for "losses" are accurate, it means that your average downloader would be buying 200 more DVDs per year. Yeah, for the MPAA's numbers to make even a tiny bit of sense, downloaders would be buying new DVDs more than every other day.

So according to the MPAA, piracy cost them $58 billion last year, making movie piracy a bigger industry than the GDPs of 10 American states. To put it even starker perspective, look at it this way. The film industry gets about $10 billion from the box office, and about $30 billion from the after market of DVDs, streaming, etc. So they’re claiming that piracy costs them almost two-thirds of their business. At $10 per DVD, every household in the United States would be buying an additional 50 DVDs per year if they weren’t so busy downloading. The technical term for a statistic like that is “fictional.”

See, they also claim that 29 million adults have ever illegally downloaded a film. But since that’s only 13% of the adult population, it makes the figure even more absurd. By their own estimate, those adults in question would have on average purchased an additional 200 DVDs each year if only they were still on dial-up. The problem with these absurd figures pulled out of the air, is that even if they are an accurate measure of how many movies are being illegally downloaded, it is not a measure of loss. As has been argued countless times, a bunch of zeros and ones do not cost the industry a dime unless they actually represent something that would have been bought otherwise. Anyone think the average downloader would actually have bought 200 more DVDs? Hell, are there even 200 new DVDs released per year?

And yet, the press and politicians still quote these numbers as accurate.

Filed Under: dvds, piracy
Companies: mpaa

MPAA So Thrilled With Zediva Ruling, It Offers To Help The Court Spread It

from the nice-of-them dept

We recently wrote about the decision by a district court judge that suggests if you have a very long cable, instead of a short cable, you may be committing copyright infringement. The exact length of the cable is not specified. This is, of course, ridiculous, but it's the only way to read the judge's ruling in the Zediva case that makes sense. Basically, if you have your DVD player at home, you're okay. But if your DVD player is in Zediva's data center, and you connect to it via the long cable of the internet, Zediva is infringing. I can't see how this makes any sense, but that's why they don't let me be a judge.

Either way, it's not very surprising that Zediva is appealing the ruling to the Ninth Circuit appeals court, which is somewhat famous for its inconsistent and, at times, contradictory approach to jurisprudence. In other words, who knows what will come out of the appeals court. It's tough to predict.

But, in the meantime, the MPAA apparently wants to get as much mileage as possible about the original ruling by Judge John F. Walter. It appears they're so in love with the ruling that they're sending love letters to the court about how more people should see the ruling, and how they're even willing to help out with the promotion:

On Thursday, attorneys for the movie studio asked Judge Walter to consider publishing his injunction order in the Federal Register so that other judges around the nation currently overseeing Internet copyright cases would have the benefit of seeing what they believe to be an astute analysis of the "transmit" clause in the Copyright Act and what it means for Internet streaming transmissions to be "to the public" under the clause. The plaintiffs also say they would be more than happy to submit the judge's opinion on his behalf to the Westlaw database.

In other words, this ruling is so ridiculous and so one-sided, that the MPAA hopes to get it ingrained among judges everywhere as quickly as possible, knowing full well that a higher court might knock them back to reality, and point out that judging whether or not something is infringing by the length of the cable between the DVD player and the TV is simply ridiculous.

Filed Under: copyright
Companies: mpaa, zediva

Leaked State Department Cable Confirms What Everyone Already Knew: MPAA Was Behind Bogus Australian ISP Lawsuit

from the pulling-the-strings dept

When it comes to copyright issues, the various State Department leaks via Wikileaks have only served to confirm what pretty much everyone already knew. Earlier we'd covered revelations about US diplomatic involvement in new copyright laws in Spain, and the latest (as a bunch of you sent in) is the rather upfront admission that the MPAA was absolutely behind the decision to sue iiNet in Australia. As you may recall, the lawsuit, which was officially organized by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT) along with the Australian arms of various movie studios, complained that Australian ISP iiNet didn't do enough to stop unauthorized file sharing. This was really a trial balloon of a case, because the MPAA knew damn well that blaming ISPs for the actions of their users was a tricky game to play. So, they tried to hit up iiNet from a slight tangent, sending over examples of infringement and then freaking out when iiNet didn't somehow magically stop all infringement.

Of course, the reality was that this was all driven directly from the MPAA in the US and iiNet was carefully chosen as a trial balloon given its size. As Richard Chirgwin notes, iiNet got to enjoy this experience because of its "Goldilocks status. iiNet was just right: Telstra is large, loud, litigious, and possessed of significant lobbying experience; too small a target and the case risked inviting the “bullying” perception that the MPAA was keen to avoid."

Despite the lead role of AFACT and the inclusion of Australian companies Village Roadshow and the Seven Network, this is an MPAA/American studios production. Mike Ellis, the Singapore-based President for Asia Pacific of the Motion Picture Association, briefed Ambassador on the filing on November 26. Ellis confirmed that MPAA was the mover behind AFACT's case (AFACT is essentially MPAA's Australian subcontractor; MPAA/MPA have no independent, formal presence here), acting on behalf of the six American studios involved. MPAA prefers that its leading role not be made public. AFACT and MPAA worked hard to get Village Roadshow and the Seven Network to agree to be the public Australian faces on the case to make it clear there are Australian equities at stake, and this isn't just Hollywood "bullying some poor little Australian ISP."

Why iiNet? Ellis said they were the right target on several levels. First, they are big enough to be important - iiNet is the third largest ISP in Australia. (Telstra, owners of top Australian ISP BigPond which has about half of the market, are the "big guns", Ellis admitted. It was clear Ellis did not want to begin by tangling with Telstra, Australia's former telecom monopoly and still-dominant player in telephony and internet, and a company with the financial resources and demonstrated willingness to fight hard and dirty, in court and out.) Ellis also said iiNet users had a particularly high copyright violation rate, and that its management has been consistently unhelpful on copyright infringements.

Amusingly, the cable claims the case is "very strong." Turns out that was wrong. iiNet famously won the case, and AFACT was even told to pay iiNet's legal costs. While an appeal somewhat limited the original (excellent and perceptive) ruling, it still crowned iiNet the winner. Perhaps the US government shouldn't trust the MPAA in setting the odds on its own lawsuits.

Anyway, while most people already knew that the MPAA was the key player here, it's nice to see it laid out in black and white. I'm also curious if the folks who usually rush to the comments to claim that the MPAA/RIAA aren't involved in some of the lawsuits we talk about will have any comment on this, since we've explained that most of these legal actions are coordinated from those two groups.

Filed Under: australia, copyright, state department, wikileaks
Companies: afact, iinet, mpaa