(PhysOrg.com) -- How many of you remember the film The Expendables? It was an action flick, featuring some of the biggest names in blowing things up, and soon it will be known as the film that has created the largest illegal-BitTorrent-downloading case in U.S. history. googletag.cmd.push(function() googletag.display('div-gpt-ad-1449240174198-2'); ); A federal judge recently gave the U.S. Copyright Group the right to subpoena the records of Internet service providers in order to see who downloaded the movie illegally. So, while 23,000 is the current expected number of defendants that number may increase by leaps and bounds as more downloads are found.When an ISP gets a subpoena they will generally tell the account holder that their subscriber information is being shared with the Copyright Group, pursuant to their investigations. So, if you are part of this suit, you will likely find out sooner rather than later. This is not the Copyright Groups only attempt to take legal action against bit torrents. One the whole, this group is taking legal action against roughly 140,000 BitTorrent downloaders, primarily for downloading B-movies and pornography.Eventually, these kinds of suits will become a bigger revenue stream than the films sales themselves. Under the current U.S. copyright law damages of up to $150,000 per infringement can be obtained. For a film that only grossed $103,068,524 domestic, if this level of damages were paid, the dollar figure would well out pace film sales.With subpoenas are expected to go out this week, one has to wonder if this is not a good time to not only forget about the bit torrenting, but also about feature films altogether. After all, if these users had wanted the film that badly, they could have bought it for roughly $20 or rented it for $6, and none of them chose to do so. That may speak to the quality of the film, as much as the ethics of the fans. 2010 PhysOrg.com
Abstract Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), will discuss the impact of digital technology on the entertainment industry. Drawing on his experience as an advocate for major producers and distributors of entertainment programming for television, cable, home video, he will discuss the promise and the dangers of emerging technologies for the production and distribution of films and TV shows. Speaker As president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Jack Valenti is a leading figure in the American film and television industry's efforts to fight digital piracy. A former journalist, Valenti has written three non-fiction books - The Bitter Taste of Glory, A Very Human President, and Speak Up With Confidence - and the political novel, Protect and Defend. He earned a B.A. from the University of Houston and an M.B.A. from Harvard. Moderator: Thomas Doherty is associate professor of American Studies and chair of the Film Studies Program at Brandeis University. His books include Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930-1934 and Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture. He also serves on the editorial boards of Cinema Journal and Cineaste. Summary [This is an edited summary, not a verbatim transcript.] THOMAS DOHERTY introduced Jack Valenti by offering a brief account of his career in advertising, national politics and president for 38 years of the Motion Picture Association of America. Recalling Valenti's service as a special advisor to President Lyndon B. Johnson, Doherty described him as "an eyewitness to, and participant in, more than his share of history." The organization that became the MPAA was established in 1922, Doherty said. Since then "there have been seven popes, 15 U.S. presidents, and 33 managers of the Boston Red Sox, but only three presidents of the MPAA." JACK VALENTI spoke of his service under Lyndon B. Johnson, and his early days as MPAA president, but focused on the current issues of piracy and the need for new distribution models for movies. But first, he acknowledged a band of students who were dressed as pirates in the audience. He jokingly welcomed these "friends of Johnny Depp, the Pirates of the Caribbean."
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When Valenti took the reigns as MPAA president in 1966, his first major initiative was to remove the last vestiges of Hays Office censorship. In 1968 he abolished the Production Code, the industry-imposed set of guidelines that spelled out what was not considered morally acceptable in the production of movies. As an alternative, he introduced the movie ratings system.
When he instituted the film rating system, he had two objectives in mind: first to protect children and provide a warning system for parents, but more importantly to "free the screen." As a defender and advocate of the First Amendment, Valenti despises the censorship of the Production Code, which limited the kind of stories directors could tell. However, with the directors' right to tell stories is the concomitant right of the audience not to watch them. Despite criticism that the system is too subjective, Valenti defends it as necessary for parents to be able to make decisions about their children. In the last decade, copyright protection and piracy have overtaken censorship issues as the main concerns of the MPAA. In a media world that is becoming increasingly digital, Valenti sees the need for changing attitudes towards intellectual property, and the necessity for new business models for the online distribution of movies. Valenti believes there is something substantive about creative property, such as a poem or movie, that makes it just real as physical property; and that it ought to have the same rights and privileges. He makes an analogy that forms the root of his beliefs on intellectual property and piracy: "If I make a table," he says, "it is my table and no one can test that. If you take it out of my house or garage, you've taken something that belongs to me, and we know that's not right. Why isn't something that flourishes in the seedbed of somebody's imagination as worthy as making a table?" For Valenti, copying a DVD is an act of stealing, not very different from stealing a DVD from a video store. Valenti cannot understand why people would never steal a DVD from Blockbuster's for fear of being arrested, but delight in copying a DVD for themselves. When people can take movies without paying for them, such piracy threatens an artist's ability to be creative. Technology is rapidly advancing, and people will soon be able to download media faster than before. At Caltech, Valenti learned of an experimental development called FAST, a data transfer protocol for the Internet that is fast enough to download a full-length movie in less than five seconds, and could be introduced to the market in as little as 18 months. Valenti believes that piracy will rise with the increased sophistication of technology. At a higher rate of piracy, this kind of pillaging will make it hard to nourish new talent and promote movies.
Valenti recognizes the Internet as the greatest distribution channel that ever existed. The movie industry is willing to embrace the web as an efficient distribution system, to make movies available on demand for a price that is fair to the consumer and delivered in a safe fashion. This will give people more choices than they ever had in terms of movie titles and ways of viewing. This is why Valenti and other members of the industry are aggressively meeting with IT people for help with developing the technology for protection. Valenti believes in objective and detailed discourse, and has great respect for people like Lawrence Lessig, with whom he disagrees on certain issues but values the friendship and discussion they share. He is anguished by the hostility and partisanship in politics today, which was not present in the days of the Johnson administration. Discussion DOHERTY: In your testimony before Congress last September, you addressed piracy as a threefold problem. There is the technological problem of protecting movies and DVDs from being illegally copied and distributed. The need for aggressive enforcement of the law, or the rewriting of laws made in the pre-digital age is a legal problem. Finally, there is the ethical problem, which I believe is the most important. How can you change the mentality of people who don't believe they are stealing by copying or downloading movies? VALENTI: I don't know that we can. On all the college campuses I have visited so far, I find the same attitudes among even the most brilliant students, the so-called "leaders of tomorrow." Although they agree that it is a kind of stealing, they reason that everyone does it, and that it costs too much to buy CDs and DVDs anyway. They don't believe they are hurting the industry when stars and studios make so much money. What they don't realize is the carpenters and lighting crews feel the effect too. As the copyright holder, the studio helps to ensure that the film will collect all its revenue and make a profit. Every movie and TV show has residuals that go to a pension for the welfare funds of different guilds. Members of the guilds get a piece of every film that is made. I only ask that people consider whether or not creative property is worthy of being respected. DOHERTY: In 1968, Congress passed the Copyright Term Extension Act, which extended corporate and author copyrights for an additional 20 years. Why was the film industry so zealous about getting this passed? This act is enabling huge conglomerates to constrain works that should be in the public domain. VALENTI: The principle reason for the Extension Act was to provide for the same term of protection as exists in Europe. A difference in copyright terms between the United States and Europe would negatively affect the international operations of the entertainment industry, since American works that are in the public domain here could be expoited elsewhere. DOHERTY: In your testimony before Congress, you expressed vehement opposition to both Internet piracy and the ready access to pornography on the web. The two issues are linked in that pornography, like movies, is available on peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing systems. VALENTI: I have an old-fashioned obligation to parents. Most parents do not know when they go to file swapping sites that it is an amalgam of music, movies, and the most squalid pornography. The most offensive material is available for children to download. Yet because I believe so strongly in the First Amendment, I want parents to be able to deal with it, so I sound these alarms. DOHERTY: In the 1930s, the Production Code was established as a self-regulatory agency that allowed classical Hollywood to thrive without the hassle of federal censorship. With the Production Code, the criteria for what was acceptable in movies was standardized and published. How does today's ratings board make its decisions?
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