The blog for aspiring & established filmmakers of independent films. by ted hope.

MPAA Spokeslawyers Insist They Not Be Identified

BoingBoing reveals how in suing RealNetworks, the MPAA has tried to keep their efforts hush, hush — and journalists complied!  The report was first published on the Wired blog which outlines the whole case.

If you hadn’t heard, RealNetworks released RealDVD, which allows consumers to copy the DVDs they own using their computers.  The Studios are demanding that a judge block the sale on grounds that copying is akin to theft.  RealNetworks says that they are stifling technological developments.

“We are disappointed that the movie industry is following in the footsteps of the music industry and trying to shut down advances in technology, rather than embracing changes that provide consumers with more value and flexibility for their purchases,” RealNetworks said.

This is such a tricky situation.  I think with all the hysteria to prevent the film business from falling into the crapper like the music industry, the efforts are coming close to making it inevitable.  It’s not a war against the consumer and advancement that the Studios seem to think is the case.
Wired boils this case (and another one) down at the end of the article:

The lawsuits beg the question of whether it is legal to copy an encrypted DVD for personal use. The courts have not squarely decided the issue as applied to CDs or DVDs, although the music and movie industry oppose copying.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which the MPAA claims RealDVD and Kaleidescape are breaking, says descrambling or circumventing encryption is a violation carrying a penalty of up to $2,500 per DVD.
RealDVD and Kaleidescape allow users to copy DVDs in their original encrypted form. Those companies, and other similar services, say their wares prevent the movies from being uploaded to torrent trackers.
Lawyers for the MPAA, in a teleconference with reporters, said Kaleidesape and RealDVD are circumventing “technology designed to prevent copying.”

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Ted Hope is a “holistic film producer”: he aims to be there from the beginning and then forever after, involved in every aspect of a film’s life cycle and ecosystem, as committed to engineering serendipity as preventing problems, as obsessed with lifting the good into the great, as he is…

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