Tag: MPAA

Six movie studios have filed a federal lawsuit against Zediva -- a movie rental start-up that allows users to watch films shortly after they're released on DVD, but before they become available on services like Netflix or Redbox. According to Zediva's founder and chief executive, Venky Srinivasan, the company operates like any other brick-and-mortar DVD rental service. Users pay to rent ...

Add 'BitTorrent' and 'RapidShare' to the long list of terms for which Google won't help you search. In an apparent attempt to curry favor with the MPAA and RIAA, the company has begun blocking all "piracy related" terms from its Autocomplete feature. (TorrentFreak reports that Instant search results have also been blocked, but searches still instantly appear for us, once we complete the term. It ...

Back in the summer, the deadline passed for colleges and universities to comply with the Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA), which required schools to develop a plan for dealing with illegal movie and music downloads on campus. Now, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has sent letters to presidents at schools across the country, reminding them that Title IV federal aid ...

According to sources in contact with CNET, the FBI is pushing forward with an investigation of 4chan and the Internet vigilante collective known as Anonymous, which has loose ties to the controversial message board. Anonymous and its members, who frequent the 4chan boards, have unleashed a flurry of DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks over the past few months on individuals and ...

Back in November, a moviegoer in Illinois was arrested and sent to jail for two days, after being caught trying to videotape segments of the latest 'Twilight' film on her digital camera. According to her team of lawyers, though, the movie theater is to blame for the entire thing. The 22-year-old woman has now filed suit against the movie theater, claiming that the manager at the Muvico ...

Few things in life are more annoying than spending 20 minutes scouring the Web for some obscure film clip, only to find out that the golden fleece you've been desperately sniffing around for has been blocked, due to copyright infringement. Party off. Well now, the good folks at NEC have just introduced a sparkling new piece of draconian software that can scan thousands of clips in the blink of an ...

We're accustomed to overstatement and morally questionable tactics from the MPAA and RIAA. Remember, these are the crews that sued a single mom for $1.9 million over 24 illegally downloaded songs, wanted anti-virus companies to start scanning for pirated media and called file sharers a bunch of drug-dealing Al Qaeda operatives. But nothing they've done before could possibly approach the level of ...

Quantifying the effect that online piracy has on businesses and copyright holders has always been an inexact science. For years, suspicion has been brewing over the accuracy of estimated losses claimed by software companies, the MPAA and even governmental agencies. Yesterday, though, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) finally admitted to the scientific shortcomings of many common ...

Share Part of being a good user and consumer is understanding how technology works, why we use it the way we do, and what the barrage of acronyms and PR jargon means. We're here to help you make sense of it all and give you a better appreciation for how that pile of transistors, pixels, and antennas works together to deliver the conveniences of the modern world to your living room or office. ...

The most powerful weapon to have recently emerged against the high-tech, big-money industry of DVD piracy comes in an unlikely package: knee-high, four-legged, and covered with black hair. Wednesday, according to the AFP, the worldwide arm of the Motion Picture Association of America (called, simply, the Motion Picture Association) announced that 35,000 pirated discs had recently been located in ...

Two years ago a 19-year-old was busted for recording a few seconds of the ending of the 'Transformers' movie, supposedly so that her little brother could see it. There was a lot of public debate, but it certainly seemed like the girl, Jhannet Sejas, was being made a scapegoat. Since then, there have been plenty of other folks prosecuted for similar offenses, but the latest one is a bit more ...

Back in September, we said it was only a matter of time before the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) went after RealDVD, the software that lets you copy entire DVDs onto your computer for personal use. Studios are currently involved in a heated lawsuit with RealNetworks in Federal court that aims to ban the sale of the product. The MPAA claims that the software violates the Digital ...

RealNetworks, the company you love to hate, is back with a new product sure to capture the attention of Hollywood and its MPAA thugs. For $30, RealDVD plans to do what DVD Jon enabled years ago -- namely, making digital copies of your DVDs. Unlike Jon's illegal DRM stripping software, RealNetworks' approach lays on additional DRM allowing you to make a single copy, only, playable on the machine ...

The Motion Picture Association of America appears to be going down a path that puts it at odds with some of goals of the digital television transition, thanks to its move to restrict the ability of digital video recorders to save high definition movies when they're first distributed via satellite, cable or even broadcast TV. The restriction, made possible by a kind of "switch" called Selectable ...

Debates are raging around the world regarding exactly what role Internet Service Providers, or ISPs, should have when it comes to the illegal swapping of music or movie files. In the U.S., Comcast has already taken steps to block those who would share files, while Verizon has made it clear that it has no intentions to monitor those it provides service to. In Japan, though, the debates are over, as ...