All Things News

The MPAA Sucks

Straight from Tech Dirt: “31 years ago, in 1978, the television program 60 Minutes put on an episode about the awful threat of “video piracy” to the movie industry. Featuring the MPAA’s Jack Valenti, the episode focused on how the VCR was going to destroy the movie business because anyone could copy and watch a movie in the privacy of their own home. Of course, in retrospect, that episode is hilariously wrong. You would think that, given how wrong they got it thirty years ago on this particular subject, 60 Minutes would be a bit more careful taking on the same subject again.

No such luck.

CBS’s 60 Minutes has made itself out to be more of a laughingstock than usual when it comes to “investigative reporting,” putting on an episode about “video piracy” that is basically 100% MPAA propaganda, without any fact checking or any attempt to challenge the (all MPAA connected) speakers, or to include anyone (anyone!) who would present a counterpoint. The episode is funny in that it contradicts itself at times (with no one noticing it) and gets important (and easily checked) facts wrong. And, of course, it basically mimics that old episode that history has shown to have been totally (laughably) false.

The report opens with the claim that counterfeit movies is where organized crime is making its money these days. Fascinating. Except they don’t show any proof whatsoever that organized crime has anything to do with movie piracy at all. They just claim it, talk about Mexican gangs, and then assume it must be true. But, of course, most of the report actually focuses on the internet and file sharing of movies — which completely goes against the claim that organized crime is “making its money” off of video piracy. After all, reports have shown that online file sharing has actually been putting DVD counterfeiters out of business. You would think that the “journalists” at 60 Minutes might have noticed this contradiction.

A big chunk of the episode is taken up by director Steven Soderbergh, who has come out in the past touting the MPAA’s line before, so it’s no surprise that he does so again. He claims that “piracy is costing Hollywood $6 billion a year at the box office.” Does he mention that Hollywood has been making more and more and more at the box office every year the past few years? Oops. No. Did the reporters at 60 Minutes look into this fact and bring it up? Of course not. The entire story appears to be an MPAA press release, so you don’t want to cloud it with pesky facts that prove they don’t know what they’re talking about.

Next up, Soderbergh claims that fewer movies are getting made thanks to movie piracy. Uh huh. Another checkable fact. Another one wrong. It was recently summarized, according to the movie industry’s own numbers:

2004 Total Movies Released: 567 Total Combined Gross: $9,327,315,935
2005 Total Movies Released: 594 Total Combined Gross: $8,825,324,278
2006 Total Movies Released: 808 Total Combined Gross: $9,225,689,414
2007 Total Movies Released: 1022 Total Combined Gross: $9,665,661,126
2008 Total Movies Released: 1037 Total Combined Gross: $9,705,677,862
2009 Total Movies Released: 1177 Total Combined Gross: $7,596,626,766
(2009 figures incomplete, total movies scheduled to be released, gross to date)

So, actually, more than double the number of movies are being made today than just five years ago. Hmm. That’s the sort of thing that a real journalist at a show like 60 Minutes might bring up to a biased director like Steven Soderberg, right? Nope.

The article mentions how to go to the movies these days, some people have to go through “airport-like security. Their bags are searched for cameras and they have to check their cell phones.” Does it point out that this might be a pretty serious reason why people might not want to go to the movies? A reason why people might actually give less money to the industry? Nope. Why bother with details like that?

And then, 60 Minutes brings on our favorite industry spokesperson: Rick Cotton, NBC Universal’s general counsel, the guy who warned that movie piracy put corn farmers at risk because people watching pirated movies eat less popcorn (never mind the fact that the corn industry is thriving, that people watching pirated movies still eat popcorn, and “popcorn” represents an infinitesimal part of the market…). Cotton was also the guy who thought it was a good idea to push people who wanted to watch the Olympics to pirate it rather than watch the crappy official online channel. Cotton is asked how many movies are released in the US:

“Ballpark, 400 to 500 movies are released in the United States.”

Except, as we noted above, he’s off by about 600 or 700 movies. Again, this is the sort of “fact” that a reporter, such as those employed by CBS and working on a television program like 60 Minutes might be expected to check, right? I would guess that most viewers of 60 Minutes expect the show’s reporters and legions of other employees to do such basic fact checking. So, given that 1177 movies are going to be released in 2009, doesn’t it make sense to, say, push back on Cotton’s bogus number? Apparently not.

Random aside: I wonder how much money CBS makes from the big studios buying movie ads? That can’t be important here, can it?

Most of the rest of the program is Soderbergh making a bunch of totally unsubstantiated statements, such as saying that no one would make The Matrix today. Why? No explanation. It’s just that Sodergbergh says.

And, of course, beyond failing to fact check the most basic facts, no one at 60 Minutes thought to talk to anyone outside of the studio system to see if it made sense. It didn’t talk to any one of the growing number of people who are making movies and embracing file sharing to help get those movies seen. It didn’t talk to moviemakers who are embracing new business models. It didn’t talk to copyright experts and consumer advocates who have shown how ridiculous the MPAA’s claims are. In other words, it presented an MPAA press release as if it were news. Thirty years after it did the same exact thing and got the entire story wrong. It didn’t even go back and note that earlier episode. It just repeated it with modern stand-ins.”

AAAARRRRRRRRGGGHHHH!

Straight from Torrent Freak: “Earlier this week TorrentFreak reported that there had been objections over one of the proposed lay judges set for the Pirate Bay appeal. Now there are yet more claims of possible bias, this time with two of the main judges who have both been members of pro-copyright groups.

On April 17th all four defendants in the Pirate Bay trial were found guilty and sentenced to one year in prison and a fine of $905,000. Despite this verdict The Pirate Bay continued to operate while the defense filed for an appeal.

A few weeks ago the Court announced that it has two weeks set aside for the Pirate Bay appeal, starting in November. The appeal will be handled by three judges, and according to defense lawyer Per E Samuelsson, two of them could be susceptible to bias.

“It is profoundly inappropriate that even in the court of appeal we have judges who are or have been members of organizations closely related to the copyright industry,” Samuelson wrote, objecting to the appointment of two of the three judges.

The appeal will be handled by judge Ulrika Ihrfelt who was previously removed from the bias investigation of Pirate Bay judge Tomas Norström, because she was linked to pro-copyright groups herself. Now she is facing the same allegations together with judge Christina Boutz.

Ihrfelt has been a member of the Swedish Copyright Association (SFU) and Boutz is a member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property (SFIR).

It is doubtful whether the objection will have an effect. After the initial trial Pirate Bay judge Tomas Norström’s objectivity was called into doubt by the defense lawyers because of his ties to national and international pro-copyright lobby groups, but the Appeal Court later ruled that this had not influenced the verdict.

Earlier this week we reported that one of the planned lay judges in the appeal could also be disqualified from participation, since he is an employee of Swedish music outfit Spotify – a company partly owned by the plaintiffs. However, there could be more to this lay judge issue than initially meets the eye.

TorrentFreak has been informed that the man in question is a bright programmer who co-owns a streaming technology patent along with the original developer of uTorrent, so there can be little doubt that he is somewhat of a BitTorrent expert. So far the defendants haven’t objected to him but there is speculation in Sweden that IFPI could be more afraid of this lay judge than their opposition is, partly since his background is at a technical university where support for Pirate Party values is strong.”

The Pirate Bat Signal

Straight from Torrent Freak: “After The Pirate Bay Four were found guilty earlier this year they appealed, and the date for the new trial was set for November. Now it seems that one of the planned lay judges could be disqualified from participation, since he is an employee of Swedish music outfit Spotify – a company partly owned by the plaintiffs.

Following the revelations that judge Tomas Norström from the original trial had connections with pro-copyright lobby groups, there had been hopes that the trial of the Pirate Bay Four could go to a retrial.

However, that eventuality was denied after the Appeal Court investigated the bias issue and ruled that the judge’s ties to these groups did not influence his judgment.

Instead of a retrial an appeal has been granted which will take place in November. The case will be handled by judge Ulrika Ihrfelt who was previously removed from the bias investigation of judge Tomas Norström, because she too was linked to pro-copyright groups.

Today there is yet another question mark hanging over the head of another judge scheduled to play a major part in the appeal.

Launched as an answer to the file-sharing problem and the possible savior of the music industry, Sweden’s Spotify music service has been widely well received by both the industry and hardened pirates. But there is a problem.

According to an SR.se report today, one of the lay judges in the case has been revealed as an employee of the fledgling streaming music service.

“If the man is not judged to be biased he will be part of the court’s team at the right time,” said judge Ulrika Ihrfelt.

“I would not say there is a problem, but we definitely consider it a factor to which we must draw the attention of the parties, given that Spotify is a company that provides online music,” Ihrfelt added.

But of course, the problem goes just a little bit further than Spotify simply being a provider of online music. It also counts the major music labels – the absolute arch-enemies of The Pirate Bay – as shareholders.

Both the plaintiffs and defendants in the appeal have been notified of the lay judge’s affiliation with Spotify and it will now be down to the court of appeal to decide if there is a conflict of interest.”

Judge Tomas Norström

Straight from Torrent Freak: “To determine if the verdict in the Pirate Bay case was biased, the connections of Judge Tomas Norström to national and international pro-copyright lobby groups will be reviewed by another judge. However, the judge that was initially appointed has already been replaced because she was linked to the same organizations as Norström, and her replacement is not exactly unbiased either.

Pirate Bay judge Tomas Norström’s objectivity has been called into doubt because of his ties to national and international pro-copyright lobby groups. Furthermore, one of the defense lawyers claimed to have evidence that Norström was handpicked and not assigned to the case randomly.

To investigate these accusations of bias, the appeal court appointed a judge, Ulrika Ihrfelt. Her task is to decide whether or not Norström’s verdict could have been biased since this issue must be resolved before they will look into the appeal request. If it’s determined that Norström was indeed biased, the case will be resubmitted to the district court for retrial, meaning that an appeal is not needed at this stage.

However, soon after the appointment of Ulrika Ihrfelt, it became known that she too had been a member of the same pro-copyright organizations as the ‘biased’ judge. The appointment was criticized by several judicial analysts who said she wasn’t fit either. Judicial praxis dictates that the court must not only be unbiased, but also be BELIEVED to be unbiased, which is clearly not the case here.

As a consequence and in order to avoid more negative press, the appeal court sent out a press release today in which they announce that Ihrfelt has been taken off the case. She has been replaced by three new judges from a separate division of the court.

In the press release, the appeal court writes: “The reasons for this is that the question of whether the original judge was biased needs to be tried by other judges other than those that later may have been given the case. Furthermore, because of the content of the claim of bias, it has been deemed proper that the question should be answered by a division that is not specialized in copyright.”

“None of the three judges are or have been members of the [pro-copyright] organizations in question,” the appeal court announced. But is this really the case?

With a simple Google search Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde has already discovered that one of the replacements, Anders Eka, is connected to the The Stockholm Center for Commercial law, together with movie industry lawyers Monique Wasted and Peter Danowsky who represented the music industry in the Pirate Bay trial.

Nevertheless, the appeal court does not intent to replace the new judge(s). “The group Anders Eka is member of has no connection to copyright issues and the interests that are present in the case. I cannot see how this specific connection could lead to that Anders Eka isn’t suitable to try the question of bias,” Fredrik Wersäll, the president of the appeal court said.

The court will not look at the appeal case before the question of Norström’s bias is settled. The bias issue will be given priority and should be settled “in a few weeks at the maximum”, according to the appeal court president.

With all the commotion and judicial incompetence displayed after the Pirate Bay trial it seems almost unthinkable that a retrial won’t be granted. It is therefore no surprise that the entertainment industries try to get some cash off the defendants before it’s too late.”

The RIAA Sucks

Straight from TorrentFreak: “It’s been almost a week since the verdicts of one year in prison and heavy financial damages were passed against the four accused in the Pirate Bay trial. The sentence seemed surprisingly tough to many analysts, with the court chosing to judge on intent only, dismissing all technical evidence.

But did The Pirate Bay Four receive a fair trial? Today, an event on Swedish national radio SR threw everything into doubt – and it’s barely believable, like something straight out of Hollywood.

The copyright industry likes to have the outcome of processes clear before engaging them so it’s perhaps unsurprising that SR today revealed that the judge Tomas Norström is in league with it on many fronts. The judge has several engagements – together with the prosecution lawyers for the movie and music industries.

The MPAA Sucks

Swedish Association of Copyright (SFU) – The judge Tomas Norström is a member of this discussion forum that holds seminars, debates and releases the Nordic Intellectual Property Law Review. Other members of this outfit? Henrik Pontén (Swedish Anti-Piracy Bureau), Monique Wadsted (movie industry lawyer) and Peter Danowsky (IFPI) – the latter is also a member of the board of the association.

Swedish Association for the Protection of Intellectual Property (SFIR) – The judge Tomas Norström sits on the board of this association that works for stronger copyright laws. Last year they held the Nordic Championships in Intellectual Property Rights Process Strategies.

.SE (The Internet Infrastructure Foundation) – Tomas Norström works for the foundation that oversees the .se name domain and advises on domain name disputes. His colleague at the foundation? Monique Wadsted. Wadsted says she’s never met Norström although they have worked together.

The Pirate Bay vs Hollywood

Commenting on the revelations, Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde brokep said, “Spectrial Cliffhanger in S01 with the verdict – S02 started with the judge being biased. Reality beats fiction yet again!”

There are several renowned lawyers and judicial commentators that are attacking Tomas Norström’s decision to take the case, in spite of having a clear conflict of interest.

“I wouldn’t have taken the case,” says former judicial ombudsman Rune Lavin.

Former Director of Public Prosecution Sven-Erik Alhem said, “You cannot hide controversial facts. The attention this gets only leads to unnecessary questioning of bias in Swedish courts. Of course the judge should have informed people of the situation prior to the process and thereby allowed the involved parties to decide if it was suitable or not.”

Lawyer Leif Silbersky made a comment all Pirate Bay supporters want to hear, “If the lawyers [for the defense] act on this immediately, this could mean a re-trial.”

Peter Sunde’s lawyer Peter Althin says he has already put in a request for a re-trial. “In my appeal, I will claim the court was biased and that the appeal court should cancel the verdict and re-submit the case to the district court,” he said.

And the judge himself? “Every time I accept a case I make an assessment on whether I am part of it or not. But I have not felt that I am biased because of those commitments,” he said.

During the trial it was the judge, Tomas Norström, that was responsible for ensuring that the trial was fair and that the lay judges did not act in their own interests.

Previously one of the original lay judges in the case had to step down when his involvement in a music rights group became known;

“Three lay judges were appointed,” said Judge Norström one week before the trial. “On a question from me to the lay judges on whether they had any involvement in copyright associations or similar, or if they are or have been artists one of them answered Yes.”

That lay judge was removed. It’s anyone’s guess why the judge didn’t think the same should apply to him.

Whether or not Tomas Norström allowed his personal interests to get in the way of a fair verdict is open for debate, but there can’t be an intelligent human being reading this news that doesn’t feel that it would’ve been better for everyone if he simply backed away from this case and let someone else take over. He has compromised the entire case and verdict.

Rick Falkvinge of Sweden’s Pirate Party said the revelations were indicative of “corruption on a completely unforgivable level.””

Movie Nazis

Straight from Ars Technica: “High Definition Content Protection (HDCP)—you can’t live with it, but you practically can’t buy an HD-capable device anymore without it. While HDCP is typically used in devices like Blu-ray players, HDTVs, HDMI-enabled notebooks, and even the Apple TV in order to keep DRMed content encrypted between points A and B, it appears that Apple’s new aluminum MacBook (and presumably the MacBook Pro) are using it to protect iTunes Store media as well.

When my friend John, a high school teacher, attempted to play Hellboy 2 on his classroom’s projector with a new aluminum MacBook over lunch, he was denied by the error you see above. John’s using a Mini DisplayPort-to-VGA adapter, plugged into a Sanyo projector that is part of his room’s Promethean system. Strangely, only some iTunes Store movies appear to be HDCP-aware, as other purchased media like Stargate: Continuum and Heroes season 2 play through the projector just fine. Attempts to play Hellboy 2 or other HDCPed films through the projector via QuickTime also get denied. Other movies that don’t work include newer films like Iron Man, Star Wars: Clone Wars, and Love Guru, but older films like Shawshank Redemption are restricted as well.

The technology in Apple’s MacBooks that prevents a seemingly arbitrary collection of iTunes Store files from being played on HDCP non-compliant devices is perhaps more accurately called DPCP, or DisplayPort Content Protection. As we’ve covered in the past, DisplayPort was designed as an open, extensible standard for computers that offers lower power consumption over DVI (especially in the Mini DisplayPort format that Apple uses on the new MacBooks). But more importantly, DisplayPort also beats DVI in the studios’ books by offering the option of 128-bit AES encrypted copy protection.

All of the tested files are wrapped in the same iTunes Store FairPlay Version 3 DRM, save for Stargate: Continuum, which John says has version 2. While Apple’s own Apple TV has used HDCP to protect video files playing from its HDMI port, this is the first time we’ve heard of Apple bringing HDCP DPCP to its hardware. (It has, however, been brought to our attention that other users have been complaining about this in Apple’s discussion forums for a couple of weeks.)”

Straight from Gizmodo: “The MPAA is such a kind and giving organization. After compiling a list of the top 25 schools for piracy, it sent them a letter last month offering the free, super-helpful University Toolkit to track naughty file-sharing on their networks. It “can produce a report that is strictly internal and therefore confidential to illustrate the level of file sharing on [your school's] network. In addition, we will send a hard copy in the near future to your university’s Chief Information Officer.” Of course, the first thing it does is call home. That’s before the security holes.The toolkit’s actually a modified version of xubuntu rolled up with some network monitoring tools like Snort, which “captures detailed information about all traffic flowing across a network” and ntop, which makes pretty graphs from the data produced by Snort.

After you install it, it sets up an Apache Web server that uploads all of the data and graphs to a web page that displays “not only bandwidth usage generated by each user on the network, but also the Internet address of every Web site each user has visited.” The kicker is that unless it’s properly firewalled, the page is open to anyone and easily Googlable if you know the kit’s URL conventions. Yet the MPAA’s overview explicitly promises “No privacy issues—the content of traffic is never examined or displayed.”

It gets better. The person who installs the toolkit isn’t prompted to setup a user/pass to block access to the site, and the default setting is to not log outsider views of the page. Like, say, the MPAA’s people. And even with the firewall blocking outsiders, tech-savvy university students can still sneak peaks.”

Straight from Ars Technica: “How many copyright violations does an average user commit in a single day? John Tehranian, a law professor at the University of Utah, calculates in a new paper that he rings up $12.45 million in liability (PDF) over the course of an average day. The gap between what the law allows and what social norms permit is so great now that “we are, technically speaking, a nation of infringers.”

Tehranian’s paper points out just how pervasive copyright has become in our lives. Simply checking one’s e-mail and including the full text in response could be a violation of copyright. So could a tattoo on Tehranian’s shoulder of Captain Caveman—and potential damages escalate when Tehranian takes off his shirt at the university pool and engages in public performance of an unauthorized copyrighted work.

Singing “Happy Birthday” at a restaurant (unauthorized public performance) and capturing the event on a video camera (unauthorized reproduction) could increase his liability, and that’s to say nothing of the copyrighted artwork hanging on the wall behind the dinner table (also captured without authorization by the camera). Tehranian calculates his yearly liability at $4.5 billion.

And all of this infringement could easily be done without even engaging in “wrong” behaviors like P2P file-sharing. Tehranian wants to make clear how such copyright issues don’t simply affect those operating in the grey or black zones of the law; they affect plenty of ordinary people who aren’t doing anything that they consider to be illegal, immoral, or even a little bit naughty.

The “vast disparity between copyright law and copyright norms” simply highlights the need for effective copyright reform. Since the 1976 Copyright Act, when all creative works automatically gained copyright protection without the need for registration, our lives have been awash in the copyrighted materials of other people. The advent of digital technology means not only that such works are simpler to use and to share, but that content owners for the first time have a realistic shot at enforcing their maximum rights.”

Straight from Ars Technica: “The MPAA won’t be happy, but fans of rogue digital music site AllOfMP3 (and its many new iterations since the shutdown of the original) will be pleased over news of a movie site mirroring the cheap, DRM-free model of its musical cousin. ZML has made a quiet debut over the last couple of months, but boasts over a thousand movies thus far, ranging from old classics to recent releases. We took a look at the service and found that, while it doesn’t have everything, it’s certainly good for stocking up on cheap (and not-very-legal) movies.”

Straight from Ars Technica: “In addition to facing the wrath of content owners around the world, The Pirate Bay’s administrators have recently been facing a much more local threat: camera-toting investigators following them around in cars marked with Danish plates. Is Prince to blame?

Prince loves sticking it to the man—this is the guy who changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol and performed with the word “slave” written on his face when he was unhappy about his recording contract. But when “the man” is Prince himself and the one doing the sticking is BitTorrent search site The Pirate Bay, Prince reaches for the lawyer stick. He has declared himself out to “reclaim the Internet,” and The Pirate Bay is at the top of his list (fan sites appear to be on the list as well).

Peter Sunde, a Pirate bay admin, tells Ars that the Purple One’s legal team has already started leaning on some advertisers to drop support for the site. “We’re not even worried, since the Internet is too big for morally upset people to get it their way,” Sunde said in an e-mail. “I’m just sad that Prince—whose music I really like—can’t understand that he’s the new Metallica versus Napster. And we all know who lost that…”"

Digg Comments

Straight from Cnet News: “New federal legislation says universities must agree to provide not just deterrents but also “alternatives” to peer-to-peer piracy, such as paying monthly subscription fees to the music industry for their students, on penalty of losing all financial aid for their students.The U.S. House of Representatives bill (PDF), which was introduced late Friday by top Democratic politicians, could give the movie and music industries a new revenue stream by pressuring schools into signing up for monthly subscription services such as Ruckus and Napster. Ruckus is advertising-supported, and Napster charges a monthly fee per student.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) applauded the proposal, which is embedded in a 747-page spending and financial aid bill. “We very much support the language in the bill, which requires universities to provide evidence that they have a plan for implementing a technology to address illegal file sharing,” said Angela Martinez, a spokeswoman for the MPAA.

According to the bill, if universities did not agree to test “technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity,” all of their students–even ones who don’t own a computer–would lose federal financial aid.

The prospect of losing a combined total of nearly $100 billion a year in federal financial aid, coupled with the possibility of overzealous copyright-bots limiting the sharing of legitimate content, has alarmed university officials.”

Digg Comments

Straight from Ars Technica: “SlySoft, the Antigua-based company behind AndDVD HD, has claimed that it knows how to defeat the additional BD+ encryption available on Blu-ray devices and that BD+ movies will be cracked by the end of the year.

In a press release, the company appears to relish its outlaw status in Hollywood. “I should really think about hiring a bodyguard now, since this product won’t please everybody,” said James Wong, the company’s head developer. He’s certainly right about that.

AACS, the “advanced” copy protection system deployed on both high-def disc formats, proved itself to be something less than hacker proof when it was cracked in a couple of months. Back in April, hackers announced a set of “non-revocable cracks” and then promptly cracked AACS again a day after it was “fixed.”

BD+ is a second layer of encryption that can be slapped on top of AACS. It wasn’t used with initial Blu-ray releases because, well, it wasn’t actually done. The specs and licensing arrangements weren’t worked out until June of this year, and it wasn’t long after that BD+ went to work annoying legal users.

The technology allows special code to run in a virtual machine that is created on Blu-ray devices. This code runs continuously in the background while a disc is playing and examines the player environment for traces of tampering or copying. The code is disc-specific and is deleted from memory once a disc is ejected.

Despite its complexity, BD+ may soon join AACS on the “PWN3D!” list. SlySoft has a good track record when it comes to handling AACS, and the company’s newest release of AnyDVD HD includes a bypass for the recent upgrade to the media key block (MKBv4) that is used to protect new HD DVD and Blu-ray films.”

Straight from Wired: “Promises of Hollywood fame and fortune persuaded a young hacker to betray former associates in the BitTorrent scene to Tinseltown’s anti-piracy lobby, according to the hacker. In an exclusive interview with Wired News, gun-for-hire hacker Robert Anderson tells for the first time how the Motion Picture Association of America promised him money and power if he provided confidential information on TorrentSpy, a popular BitTorrent search site.

According to Anderson, the MPAA told him: “We would need somebody like you. We would give you a nice paying job, a house, a car, anything you needed…. if you save Hollywood for us you can become rich and powerful.”

In 2005, the MPAA paid Anderson $15,000 for inside information about TorrentSpy — information at the heart of a copyright-infringement lawsuit brought by the MPAA against TorrentSpy of Los Angeles. The material is also the subject of a wiretapping countersuit against the MPAA brought by TorrentSpy’s founder, Justin Bunnell, who alleges the information was obtained illegally.

The MPAA does not dispute it paid Anderson for the sensitive information, but insists that it had no idea that Anderson stole the data. “The MPAA obtains information from third parties only if it believes the evidence has been collected legally,” says MPAA spokeswoman Elizabeth Kaltman.”

Digg Comments

Straight from Ars Technia: “The old cliché “You’re not paranoid if they really are out to get you” turns out to apply quite nicely to the world of P2P file-sharing. A trio of intrepid researchers from the University of California-Riverside decided to see just how often a P2P user might be tracked by content owners. Their startling conclusion: “naive” users will exchange data with such ”fake users” 100 percent of the time. Anirban Banerjee, Michalis Faloutsos, and Laxmi Bhuyan collected more than 100GB of TCP header information from P2P networks back in early 2006 using a specially-doctored client. The goal of the research was a simple one: to determine “how likely is it that a user will run into such a ‘fake user’ and thus run the risk of a lawsuit?” The results are outlined in a recent paper (PDF), “P2P: Is Big Brother Watching You?”

For years, P2P communities have suspected that affiliates of the RIAA, the MPAA, and others have been haunting P2P networks to look for those who might be swapping copyrighted files. It’s more than a hunch; it’s well documented that companies like SafeNet (formerly Media Sentry) engage in this sort of work, and that their testimony is routinely produced at trials. It helped to bring down Jammie Thomas, in fact.

But identifying these organizations is hard. The nature of their business is to remain shadowy, but P2P advocates have spent years compiling “blocklists” of IP ranges that are suspected of belonging to such companies. Connect to a “user” who has an IP address in one of the blocklists and bam: you’ve just been tracked swapping a file.”

Straight from Slashdot: “Ars Technica is reporting that the MPAA is trying to convince major ISPs to do content filtering. Now, merely wanting it is one thing, but the more important point is that ‘AT&T has agreed to start filtering content at some mysterious point in the future.’ We’re left to wonder about the legal implications of that, but given that AT&T already has the ability to wiretap everything for the NSA, it was only a matter of time before they found a way to profit from it, too.”

Straight from Slashdot: “The company MediaDefender works with the RIAA and MPAA against piracy, setting up fake torrents and trackers and disrupting p2p traffic. Previously, the TorrentFreak site accused them of setting up a fake internet video download site designed to catch and bust users. MediaDefender denied the entrapment charges. Now 700MB of MediaDefender’s internal emails from the last 6 months have been leaked onto BitTorrent trackers. The emails detail their entire plan, including how they intended to distance themselves from the fake company they set up and future strategies. Other pieces of company information were included in the emails such as logins and passwords, wage negotiations, and numerous other aspect of their internal business.”

Straight from TorrentFreak: “Torrentspy and Isohunt announced that they will give content owners a “carte blanche” to remove torrents from their BitTorrent search engines last month. The perfect solution for content owners and site admins says Torrentspy – a nightmare according to The Pirate Bay.

It all started when Torrentspy owner Justin launched a .torrent removal system called “FileRights” that content owners can use to take down “infringing” torrents. From now on, the FileRights system will be used on Torrentspy and Isohunt, two BitTorrent sites that were sued last year by the MPAA.

This basically means that the content owners such as the RIAA and the MPAA get complete control over the(ir) content on all the sites that use FileRights. They decide what torrents can stay and what torrents have to be filtered out. Pirate Bay admin Brokep thinks that the removal system is a step in the wrong direction and accuses Torrentspy of trying to make money by sleeping with both sides, “if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen, don’t blow it up so nobody else can cook” he adds.”

Digg Comments

Straight from Ars Technica: ” How much would you pay to see a new theatrical release in the comfort of your own home? Comcast is trying to make the “simultaneous release” dream happen, but with prices being proposed in the $30-50 range per screening, the dream looks more like a Hollywood acid trip. Comcast COO Stephen Burke told attendees at last week’s national cable confab that studios are interested, but that interest must be limited, for he didn’t name names and the studios aren’t talking. It is the first time we’ve heard some quasi-solid pricing details from a major player, however.

The idea behind “simultaneous release” is that technology—in particular, bandwidth to the home—has advanced to the point where day-and-date distribution of new films is not only technically feasible, but desirable. The durability on the side of consumers stems from growing dissatisfaction with the movie-going experience, and Hollywood’s interest is where it always is: on the money.”

Straight from Ars Technica: “Despite the best efforts of the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) Licensing Administration (AACS LA), content pirates remain one step ahead. A new volume key used by high-def films scheduled for release next week has already been cracked. The previous AACS volume key was invalidated by AACS LA after it was exposed and broadly disseminated earlier this month. The latest beta release of SlySoft’s AnyDVD HD program can apparently be used to rip HD DVD discs that use AACS version 3. Although these won’t hit store shelves until the May 22, pirates have already successfully tested SlySoft’s program with early release previews of the Matrix trilogy.

AACS LA’s attempts to stifle dissemination of AACS keys and prevent hackers from compromising new keys are obviously meeting with extremely limited success. The hacker collective continues to adapt to AACS revisions and is demonstrating a capacity to assimilate new volume keys at a rate which truly reveals the futility of resistance. If keys can be compromised before HD DVDs bearing those keys are even released into the wild, one has to question the viability of the entire key revocation model.”

Straight from Ars Technica: “When AACS was revealed as the encryption format of choice for HD DVD and Blu-ray, bets were placed on how long it would take for it to be cracked. Since the first HD DVD and Blu-ray discs began shipping, hackers have been hard at work figuring out how to break the encryption; DVD Jon even registered DeAACS.com. We’ve covered both crackers’ efforts and the attempts by the AACS Licensing Authority to keep those cracks from seeping into the public consciousness. Yesterday, all of that came to a head. A submission on Digg which contained the recently uncovered encryption key for HD DVD discs was removed yesterday by the site’s admins after the site was served with a DMCA takedown notice, according to Digg CEO Jay Adelson. Such takedown notices are not uncommon. The AACS LA has issued them far and wide in an attempt to give the crack as low a profile as possible—Boing Boing blogger Cory Doctorow was the recent recipient of just such a notice after students of a class on copyright he was teaching at the University of Southern California posted the key and a link to the infamous Doom9 forum where AACS cracks have been openly discussed.

The futility of the AACS’ actions was demonstrated last night when Digg was hit with a barrage of submissions containing the forbidden key. For a few hours, Digg’s front page consisted of little more than a succession of links to the hexadecimal HD DVD key. After several hours, Digg cofounder Kevin Rose said that the site had received the message loud and clear, pledging that Digg would no longer kill stories and comments containing the key.

Previously, straight from Ars Technica: “The latest attack vector bypasses the encryption performed by the Device Keys—the same keys that were revoked by the WinDVD update—and the so-called “Host Private Key,” which as yet has not been found. This was accomplished by de-soldering the HD DVD drive’s firmware chip, reading its contents, and then patching it. Once that was done, the firmware was soldered back onto the drive.

Despite the technical difficulty of performing this hack, it does offer some advantages in the race to beat AACS copy protection. “They cannot revoke this hack,” said forum member arnezami, who has been at the center of much of the AACS cracking recently. “No matter how many Private Host Keys they revoke we will still be able to get Volume IDs using patched xbox 360 HD DVD drives.”"

For screen grabs of the Digg front page onslaught, head over to Gizmodo for their take on the story: Digg Riot in Full Effect Over Pulled HD-DVD Key Story.