MPAA One rule for us, and another for everyone else – MPAA Pirates
It appears that the Motion Picture Association of America cannot even follow their own rules. The organisation best known for it’s zero tolerance to piracy policy has admitted to copying a film without permission.
Taken from the MPAA’s website:
“Movie pirates are thieves, plain and simple. Piracy is the unauthorized taking, copying or use of copyrighted materials without permission. It is no different from stealing another person’s shoes or stereo, except sometimes it can be a lot more damaging.”
This has come to light after a movie called “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” had been copied without permission of the owner Kirby Dick. The MPAA’s vice president for corporate communications Kori Bernards told the Los Angeles Times “We made a copy of Kirby’s movie because it had implications for our employees”.
So what is it? Is it OK to copy a movie for internal use? It seams that the MPAA are labelling people as pirates, but do the same things themselves.
Copying and selling films is a criminal activity and those responsible should be prosecuted. There is a difference between those that seek profit from piracy, and others that the MPAA label as pirates. What about those that record a program from the TV, and then lend it to a friend for them to watch? Or someone that makes a copy of a DVD so that they can still watch the film if the disc gets scratched? Should these people really be classified the same as a movie pirate? If so then that has some implications for the way the MPAA appear to conduct their business.
The classification of pirate gets even more obscure where the MPAA tried to prosecute Jon Johansen for just wanting to be able to play a DVD he owned on his own computer:
For more details of the MPAA piracy see: VNUNET News MPAA accused of DVD piracy