- "Dodd has many friends on Capital Hill and I'm sure they've acted and continue to act with the utmost propriety. Link map at muckety.
Posted on 04/11/2011 1:33:00 PM PDT by bronxville
Chris Dodd on front lines of movie copyright war
Less than a month into his new job as head of the Motion Picture Association of America, former Sen. Chris Dodd finds himself in the midst of another high-pitched battle.
This time the issue isn’t health care and financial reform. It’s copyright infringement, an ongoing tug-of-war since the advent of broadband internet access.
Members of the Motion Picture Association filed suit in a federal court in Los Angeles Monday, accusing a movie-rental web site, Zediva, of illegally streaming films online.
Zediva offers movies after they are available on DVD, but weeks before they are made available to other web sites, such as Netflix, that have studio licenses.
When Dodd delivered his first speech as MPAA chairman last week, he described movie piracy as “the single biggest threat we face as an industry.”
He called for stricter laws and more forceful enforcement, saying consumer education was key to preventing movie theft.
Lobbying efforts will also be a big part of the campaign. The MPAA reported spending nearly $1.7 million lobbying Congress in 2010. Legislation to rein in digital piracy was a prime concern.
After six years in the House and 30 years in the Senate, Dodd has many friends on Capital Hill.
A former chief of staff, Rosa L. DeLauro (Stanley Greenberg), is now a member of the House. Her husband was a pollster for Dodd's 2008 presidential campaign. Another former aide, Mark Warner, is now a U.S. senator with a seat on the Commerce Committee, which oversees copyright issues.
- "Dodd has many friends on Capital Hill and I'm sure they've acted and continue to act with the utmost propriety. Link map at muckety.
Best solution to the problem is to simply prohibit commercial vendors from using easily copied technology.
Turnabout’s fair play. Big Entertainment was always at Chris’ zipper!
dodd=criminal
Story in my area today about a family that is being sued by the RIAA for big money over a song their 15-year old illegally downloaded. The family is on Section 8, Food Stamps, basically does not have a pot to you-know-what in.
But, the Democrats are the party of the Little Guy, aren’t they? /SARC sarc sarc sarc sarc
Every movie that is pirated represents less money the studios have to make more anti-American, anti-free market propaganda. Remind me again why Congress should spend a minute on this.
and don’t forget, big entertainment wants to keep more of what is theirs. obama doesn’t want YOU to, though!
Excellent points OldDeckHand.
That’s sad but if the family have no money then let them try and get blood out of a stone.
Dodd should be wearing a orange jumpsuit these days.
Actual title: MPAA Check to Dodd’s Campaign Fund Clears
I support reasonable copyright (and patent) laws. The key word is reasonable.
The founding fathers limited the time a copyright or patent would provide protection to the owner of the copyright or patent. The goal as I understand it was two fold, one allow the creator a certain amount of time to earn the reward for their effort and the second part was to allow the work or invention to move into public domain to aid commerce.
The process has become corrupt.
You mean like HARD DRIVES...right?
Not possible. As long as a movie shows up clearly on screen there will always be ways to capture it.
Perhaps making purchased DVD's more desireable by enabling a preview/warning bypass to get right to the movie, wrap the disk in a nicer package with more artwork/extras, or offering free upgrades to next format for life would help.
In any case piracy as it stands now is more beneficial to low production movies than the movie industry is willing to admit. Piraters are rampant on movie critiquing forums such as IMDB or RottenTomatoes and they are hyping up films that otherwise would be forgotten or unnoticed by the general moviegoer if they hadn't illegally downloaded them to begin with.
Also find it odd that the biggest piracy site (piratebay) never seems to be targeted...
I don’t care who pirates what movie, tv show, book or song.
I’d care if there was still sensible copyright.
Disney still holds all rights to “Steamboat Willie” so long after it was made.. it’s just insane.
They tried their best to make it illegal to rent movies.
They tried to make it illegal to sell used books.
They tried to make it illegal to own a damned video recorder.
RIAA/MPAA Headquarters: You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Also, add to the list they tried to make it illegal to sell used CD's, and demonized people who used cassette tapes to record radio broadcasts or make mix-tapes.
Way back in the day when a printing press was a REAL PRESS and operated by hand it was probably one of the more expensive ways to make a copy (more or less, considering holographic representations were in all essential elements "free" but inferior).
Today, it's the other way around. The best stuff is cheap and getting cheaper.
There's nothing whatsoever in the history of printing that says producers are guaranteed a right to use the cheapest stuff.
There are numerous ways to control copying ~ and all of them are expensive! The legal standard here should be that Commercial Use, to enjoy protection in the courts, must use more expensive systems.
This would take us back to the day when Ben Franklin could use a press to print a page yet a barely literate neighbor could copy down a story with pencil and paper by hand and go about his business without fear of the FBI (or equivalent thereof). Today that pencil and paper are DVDs and computers. Let Hollyweird and its competitors use OTHER STUFF.
Intellectual property rights are property rights!
It can be argued (probably correctly) that copyright periods are too long. However, that doesn’t justify piracy.
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