MPAA Pirated Clips From Google Commercials To Make Its Own MPAA Propaganda Videos

from the can't-make-this-stuff-up dept

And here's another one from the Sony archives, this time noticed by Parker Higgins. It involves an email thread between Sony TV's Chief Marketing Officer Sheraton Kalouria and the company's top intellectual property lawyer Leah Weil (with top TV exec Steve Mosko included in the cc: field). In the email, they're discussing a new "reputational initiative" by the MPAA. From other emails, it appears that the MPAA finally realized that its reputation was toxic, and figured that rather than, maybe, figuring out why that is, it would put together a marketing campaign to improve the public's view of the MPAA. Here were the four goals of the campaign:

• Fill the knowledge gap about our industry
• Change consumer perceptions
• Claim our rightful position as innovators
• Reframe our consumer message in a positive tone

I note that "stop suing our customers and biggest fans" and "stop trying to censor parts of the web or destroy innovations that challenge our business model" didn't make the list. That's too bad, as either of those steps might actually, you know, help improve the MPAA's reputation.

But the really amazing thing about the campaign? Apparently at least some of the video involved unauthroized copying of content from... Google. The same Google that the MPAA and studios had dubbed "Goliath" and who they were hell bent on destroying because of the misleading belief that Google helped people infringe on their copyrights. Here was Kalouria's email to Weil:

Also, I was somewhat horrified that their creative shop used footage from Google commercials in their “Swipe-o-matic”. I kid you not…some of those scenes of people being “moved” by movies are from a current Google campaign...!

Weil only responded with a single word:

Yikes!!!

Yes. If you've been following along with the home game, you know that the MPAA is really, really against copyright infringement (or at least that's what it would have you believe). And it believes that Google is the single-biggest problem in the copyright world these days. And yet, when it's time for the MPAA to put together some of its own propaganda to put some spit and polish on its down in the dumps reputation, what does it do? Make use of Google's footage and pretend that the people being "moved" are actually being moved by the MPAA's movies.

Apparently, infringing on the works of others is okay for the MPAA when it does it itself. And that's leaving out the extreme irony of using Google's ad footage as well. It's unclear if this MPAA film ever saw the light of day, but it would be fascinating to see if anyone has it...

Filed Under: copying, copyright, leah weil, reputation, sheraton kalouria, sony emails, sony hack
Companies: google, mpaa, sony