MPAA CEO Chris Dodd was a speaker at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club on Tuesday night where he spoke at length about SOPA, PIPA, and what Hollywood’s doing to help combat piracy. He also spoke at length with Wired after the talk to further clarify what he thought about the Internet movement against the two anti-piracy bills from earlier this year, and other subjects.

First of all, Dodd was adamant that SOPA and PIPA are dead. During his interview with Wired, he said that the “legislation is gone. It’s over.” He did say this was his own opinion though. Lawmakers could introduce a similar bill next year.

As for the Internet’s reaction and subsequent protest, he said that he’s never seen a bigger protest to proposed bills in his life. He also said that the protest “changed forever how people are going to address their elected representatives.” He even went on to call it a “transformative event.”

After the talk, Dodd provided some more details on the secretive six-strike policy that the MPAA and ISPs are implementing across the country. He says that Internet users will not receive any kind of punishment for the first three offenses, but will be subject to various “mitigation measures” after their fourth offense. These include speed throttling and redirects, but it’s still unclear if ISPs can cut off service altogether for repeat offenders.

On a final note, it seems that Dodd is ready to start working with the tech sector instead of pushing through ill-conceived legislation. He said that he’s not interested in pursuing a legislative solution, but rather teaming up with the tech industry to educate consumers about piracy and its effects on the marketplace. The fruits of Dodd’s labor can already be seen in Google’s recent algorithm update that adds copyright removal notices to their ranking signals.

The curious case of Megaupload has seen its ups and downs since the beginning, but one thing has remained constant. Users have been repeatedly screwed over in regards to getting their data back. The MPAA, RIAA and the U.S. government all believe that Megaupload was only used for nefarious purposes, and use that line whenever Megaupload argues to have its user’s data returned. The MPAA was actually fine with users getting their data back, but they wanted everybody to play by their own restrictive rules.

The EFF has been fighting this whole time to have users’ data returned to them after the case of Kyle Goodwin came to light. Goodwin lost his entire business when Megaupload was taken down. There are others who have similar stories. That’s why the judge in the case, Liam O’Grady, wanted all interested parties to work out a deal. No such deal has been struck and users are still stuck without having any access to the data that, in some cases, they may desperately need.

The only option now is to take the case back to Judge O’Grady. EFF attorney Julie Samuels told TorrentFreak that O’Grady has been slow with a response to their request. In the past, O’Grady has proven that he doesn’t want to make a ruling on the case, but rather favors all parties coming to an agreement. If Apple and Samsung can’t come to an agreement on patents; there’s little to no chance of the MPAA agreeing with the EFF.

It’s hard to say when O’Grady will come to a decision. He may just send everybody back to the drawing room again to come up with an agreement. Here’s hoping that he actually makes a definitive statement on this case instead of leaving it up to the separate parties to agree on a deal.

As for Kim Dotcom, here’s his feelings on the matter:

Follow @KimDotcom

Kim Dotcom
@KimDotcom

Dear US Federal Judge, justice delayed is justice denied. Please make a ruling. The world is watching. No pressure

 Reply  ·  Retweet  ·  Favorite
16 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto

One figure who is still thinking about SOPA is Paul Brigner, former Chief Technology Officer for the MPAA. He was CTO for the group while SOPA was being debated and ultimately killed by the largest online protest movement in the history of mankind. During that time, he defended SOPA and said it was a good way to stop online piracy.

It seems that in the seven months since SOPA has been dead, Brigner has had a change of heart. He’s now working for the Internet Society, a group that was part of the protest movement against SOPA. Being with the group has apparently changed his mind on the matter. He even wrote a letter to the White House explaining why the Internet is so important:

We are also of the opinion that any enforcement attempts – at both national and international levels – should ensure and not jeopardize the stability, interoperability and efficiency of the Internet, its technologies and underlying platforms. The Internet – a network of networks – is based on an open and distributed architecture. This model should be preserved and should surpass any enforcement efforts.

It’s nice to see some more influential people coming out against SOPA and even changing their mind on the bill. He might be a little late to the party, but it’s appreciated nonetheless. It’s especially appreciated that the letter is also meant to help shape future IP enforcement policy. It seems that Washington is actually looking for input from those “nerds” that they neglected to even acknowledge when SOPA was first being debated.

The MPAA, meanwhile, has stated that, while industry leaders did meet with Biden back in July of 2011, it was to discuss the vice president’s trip to China in August. Nothing about Kim Dotcom, Megaupload, or the illegal content the site hosted was ever discussed. Furthermore, they insisted that Ellis is not an extradition expert, regardless of what the Megaupload mastermind has claimed.

“The purpose of this meeting with the vice president was to discuss his [then] upcoming trip to China last August and the importance of reaching a settlement, with the Chinese government, of the United States World Trade Organization complaint against China, which would increase the number of foreign films permitted into that country and provide a better share of box office revenues,” the MPAA said in a statement to CNET. “The eventual agreement announced in February was a major step forward in spurring the growth of U.S. exports to China, and was tremendous news for the millions of American workers and businesses whose jobs depend on the entertainment industry.”

However, someone using the screen name “mrkimdotcom” posted a rebuttal to the MPAA’s claim that Ellis isn’t an expert in extradition. Citing a website called ScreenSingapore, the individual posted the following revelation:

Ellis joined the MPA from the litigation department of the international law firm Herbert Smith, and is a lawyer qualified in Hong Kong, England and Wales. Prior to this, he had a distinguished career in law enforcement that spanned two decades over which he served first in the British Police and then the Royal Hong Kong Police. There, he spent six years with the Commercial Crime Bureau focusing on trans-national fraud and extradition requests. He ultimately rose to the rank of Superintendent.

So who’s telling the truth? Is it the MPAA, who will say or do anything to protect itself and the studios it represents? Or is it Dotcom, who will say or do anything to avoid being extradited to the United States to face charges of copyright violation? I’m sure more interesting arguments from both sides of the fence will be tossed around before this situation is resolved.

The petition comes on the heels of the announcement that Google is going after the video-to-mp3 conversion site with the obvious title, YouTube-MP3.com, something that’s reflected in the petition’s introduction:

For decades people were allowed to take a private copy of a public broadcast. You could record the radio program with a cassette recorder or make a copy of your favorite movie by using a video recorder. All these techniques have been opposed heavily in its early years by the big media companies who didn’t want the public to have such technology. They did describe such technology as criminal and as a threat to their business.

Several years later history is about to repeat: Google has teamed up with the RIAA to make the same claims against all sorts of online recording tools for their 21th century broadcasting service: YouTube (“Broadcast yourself”). Google is taking action against nearly every service that enables its users to create a private copy of a public YouTube broadcast while the RIAA is threatening news media like CNet for promoting such a software.

I hereby ask Google to break their silence and participate in an open and fair discussion with the intention to find a solution that suits the needs of the users.

It should be noted that while consumers could tape music from the radio or make duplicates of other tapes with a dual-cassette setup, it wasn’t necessarily smiled upon by the powers that were. In fact, the MPAA went all out against the technology that was videocassette recorders (VCRs). The difference being, media consumption in the 80s was very much a one-way process, with the consumer having little recourse regarding feedback. Sure, an occasional letter might have made capitalism work in your favor, but there certainly weren’t multiple avenues of communication like those offered by Facebook and Twitter.

With that in mind, should users be able to make copies of YouTube content, be it in the form of third part video recording software or through sites that rip the video’s soundtrack out, converting it to an MP3? While the comparison between DVRs and Internet broadcasts are based in logic, it’s impossible to see the current powers that be siding with the user here, especially when you consider the massive fuss these content providers have made about YouTube in the past. Perhaps a balance could be struck allowing users who upload their own self-created content to give their viewers the option of downloading the file.

Other than that, it’s hard to see a day that the RIAA says “sure, you can download any of the music you like from YouTube’s VEVO service, unless the song was purchased by the viewer first. As pointed out by GigaOm, the petition has over 180,000 signatures since it was put up three days prior. While the support is admirable, it’s hard to see this working out in their favor.

Speaking to CNET, Ira Rothken described the MPAA’s “sympathetic” gesture as just “posturing.” He says that the MPAA’s request to have the files filtered and only legitimate files returned is impossible. The current digital landscape makes it nearly impossible to distinguish a legitimate film download from a pirated copy. Couple that with the assumption that some people used Megaupload to store legitimate copies of their films and you have an indecipherable mess.

Rothken sees this impossibility as their chance. The U.S. government, the MPAA and other groups accuse Megaupload of being a haven of piracy and copyright infringement. If you can’t tell the difference between a pirated and legitimate copy of a film, how do you know if Megaupload was the piracy haven that these groups claim it to be? The only way you could do it is by issuing subpoenas to every Megaupload user around the world and that’s just impossible.

Like many, including Rothken and yours truly, are suggesting, the MPAA is just using this as a way to promote themselves as no longer being the bad guy. They need to prove that they’re a friend of the Internet after the SOPA debacle. Saying that they’re totally okay with Megaupload users getting their files back would build a lot of good will, but only among those who don’t know how insurmountable of a task that actually is.

It’s also important to remember that the MPAA didn’t even issue their support for Megaupload users getting their data back. They just said that they were fine with it if the court were to issue such an order. In essence, the MPAA is being a slacktivist. They’re fine with the cause, but they don’t want to lift a finger to actually help in the process. If they were really behind people getting their files back, they would be using their considerable weight in the court system to get something done.

In the end, it’s just another weird instance to come out of the Megaupload saga. We’ll keep you up to date on any further developments, including the potential for all charges against them to be dropped. It’s a long-shot, but Dotcom and Rothken are confident in their ability to beat the United States.

It’s that problem that has the RIAA so angry about Google and other search engines. People can still use Google to find this content and it’s just so infuriating for content owners. Well, the RIAA has an ally in wanting to censor search engines – The Pirate Bay. Wait, what?

You heard that right, folks. The Pirate Bay would love nothing more than for Google, Bing and others to filter out their search results so that The Pirate Bay would never be listed again. Isn’t that a bad thing for the torrent tracker though? According to The Pirate Bay, only 10 percent of their traffic comes from these “competing search engines.” That’s not a lot, but why are they competing?

The Pirate Bay fancies itself as being the most comprehensive media search engine on the Web. If Google and others were forced to remove The Pirate Bay from their results, that would leave only The Pirate Bay getting all that search traffic for media. Ten percent of 30 million users is still a lot and they would now be providing The Pirate Bay with direct searches.

It’s pretty hard to argue with that kind of logic. Countless people numbering in the millions probably have The Pirate Bay bookmarked and visit it frequently. Policies that the copyright industries tries to push through only serves to help sites like The Pirate Bay.

The Pirate Bay as they are wont to do issued their thanks to the RIAA in their own special way:

So from the bottom of our hearts, THANK YOU RIAA, this is great news for us! For once, we support your efforts in something! Let’s make sure that TPB keeps on growing together!

Hugs’n'kisses from your pals at The Pirate Bay – soon to be the biggest media search engine in the world!

This is just the latest string in cases that finds attempts against The Pirate Bay to only prove futile, but extremely profitable for The Torrent Tracker. After being banned in the United Kingdom, The Pirate Bay saw its daily user count jump by over 10 million. The tracker also recently revealed that they have numerous IP addresses at their disposal to circumvent any and all attempts at censoring them.

It’s moments like these that The Pirate Bay truly lives up to its mantra as “The galaxy’s most resilient BitTorrent site.”

Those legitimate users now have a friend in the MPAA. I know, I couldn’t believe it myself. In the past, the organization wanted access to Megaupload’s servers so that it could sue those who were using the service to illegally distribute films.

In a response to Megaupload user poster boy Kyle Goodwin, the MPAA filed a motion in court that said the members are “sympathetic to legitimate users who may have relied on Megaupload to store their legitimately acquired or created data.” That seems so nice of them. I would think there would be some sort of catch or something. Oh wait, here it is:

However, the MPAA Members’ position continues to be that if the Court is willing to consider allowing access for users such as Mr. Goodwin to allow retrieval of files, it is essential that the mechanism include a procedure that ensures that any materials the users access and copy or download are notfiles that have been illegally uploaded to their accounts, given that MPAA Members and other rights holders are certain to own the copyrights in many of the files stored on the servers.

Apparently, the MPAA thinks that people only shared movies over Megaupload. It’s hilarious because movies would have to be split into parts on Megauplaod due to file size restrictions. Even if Megaupload was used to share movies, it would be obvious that torrents and other file sharing services with larger file caps would be more popular for such activities.

So if the MPAA is being this nice to the regular user, are they willing to show the same sympathy to Dotcom and the other defendants. These guys need the data that’s on their servers as evidence to protect themselves. Surely the sympathetic MPAA would show the same kindess to Megaupload. Oh wait, I forgot, it’s the MPAA and they don’t like Megaupload:

In addition, in no event should any Megaupload defendants or their representatives—who have not generally appeared in this proceeding, and who are not subject to the control and supervision of the Court—be allowed to access the Mega Servers under such a mechanism designed for the benefit of third party Megaupload users. Whether and under what conditions the Mega defendants should have access to the servers (again, assuming they are subject to the control of the Court) is a separate issue.

So the MPAA is sympathetic to normal users and still hates Megaupload. It’s a start and oen that will hopefully play out to see legitimate users have their files returned to them. It’s good to see the MPAA perhaps turning over a new leaf. It’s like when MPAA head boss Chris Dodd said that they should stop referring to piracy as theft. Oh wait, Dodd was just saying that to push a new SOPA later on without the backlash that the first try received. It seems that the same fine print tactic is being used in this case as well:

In short, the MPAA Members take no position on whether the Court should or should not exercise its equitable jurisdiction to respond to Mr. Goodwin’s request. Our concerncontinues to be simply that if the Court were to allow such access, steps must be taken to ensure that the unauthorized copies of copyrighted content on the Mega Servers are not allowed to enterthe stream of commerce.

In all reality, the MPAA is just saying, “We’re cool if you want to get your files back, but we’re not going to petition for it or anything. But hey, at least we’re pals, right?” All of this just means that we’re right back where we started. The courts still have to decide on whether or not to keep the data while the MPAA makes silly demands.

MPAA Mega Files

[h/t: Ars Technica]

In an interview with Variety.com, Dodd revealed an interesting, change-is-possible thinking when discussing the MPAA’s approach to piracy. From his perspective, perhaps the MPAA’s wording was to harsh. In fact, he suggested a different approach regarding the mindset concerning piracy by saying:

He said Saturday that the industry will need to take a far more nuanced approach to promoting future antipiracy legislation.

“We’re going to have to be more subtle and consumer-oriented,” he added. “We’re on the wrong track if we describe this as thievery.”

Now, does this mean Dodd doesn’t view piracy as theft or is this simply a change in strategy in an attempt to woo support for future editions of SOPA? Judging by the “promoting future antipiracy legislation” portion, it suggests very clearly that the war on piracy is far from over, at least from the MPAA’s perspective. It seems as if the change in the way the piracy is described is meant to suggest a softer stance towards file sharers, but it also rings as if he’s suggesting a lighter approach–not calling content pirates thieves–will garner more support from the public, and, more importantly, the tech industry.

A quote concerning Google’s stance on SOPA demonstrates this rather well:

But Internet companies such as Google, Facebook and Twitter campaigned effectively against the legislation, mobilizing users on grounds that the new rules would impede the free flow of information on the Internet.

“Google chose wisely by making Hollywood the enemy,” Dodd said ruefully.

Another thing that might help get the tech industry on board is craft future versions of SOPA in such a way that it doesn’t potentially break the Internet.

That being said, the fact that Dodd suggests a change in the approach to piracy, while mentioning the role consumers play can be categorized as potential hope. The idea of embracing the Internet as a primary vehicle for content delivery, even first-run movies, is a step in the right direction. The Oatmeal’s take on watching Game of Thrones perfectly demonstrates the position many consumers find themselves in before resorting to file sharing.

Who knows, maybe somebody forwarded that particular comic to Dodd’s email and he got the message. But then again, maybe he’s just trying a more subtle approach to generate support for future versions of SOPA, which remains very much on his mind:

“I can’t say anything to [US Senators] about this for another seven months, but I think my colleagues understand how important this is,” he said.

Just make sure you don’t call piracy theft.

Yesterday, New York’s YES network released a video promoting the new anti-bullying documentary, Bully. In the video, some of the Yankees’ biggest names – Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Curtis Granderson, and Alex Rodriguez – talk about the serious problems bullying is creating in schools. They encouraging students to step in (safely) when they see classmates being bullied, and to always tell an adult. They also direct viewers to the Bully Project’s website. Check out the video below:

The documentary film Bully has received a lot of attention in recent weeks. When The Weinstein Company, the production company behind the film, submitted it to the MPAA, the agency slapped it with an R-rating. TWC appealed the decision, arguing that the rating would keep many of the very kids at whom the film was aimed from seeing it. The MPAA denied the appeal, insisting that the R-rating wasn’t as big a problem as TWC argued.

A massive petition, support from celebrities, and even a letter from Congress fell on deaf ears. After an initial unrated release at the end of March, the MPAA finally agreed to give the film an R rating if director Lee Hirsch agreed to remove three f-words.

Here’s the official trailer for the film: