My stance on the issues of movie piracy and how the MPAA polices the digital world have long been established here on The Movie Blog. In coles notes form, my thoughts look something like this:
1) Pirating movies is wrong
There are people out there who put in huge amounts of effort and spends small (and large) fortunes in making movies. They deserve your $10 if you’re going to sit there and watch their film.
2) People who actually film the movies in theater or steal digital copies and put them on the internet should go to jail
I have no sympathy for the person who gets caught with a video recorder in a movie theater and gets 5 years in prison. You’re a thief, you knew what would happen if you got caught, and you got caught. Tough luck… if you drop the soap I’d suggest you just accept that it’s lost and not pick it up.
3) The MPAA are going after the wrong people
The real answer to movie piracy is NOT suing little Johnny Ballwhacker who downloaded a copy of “The Girl Next Door” in his bedroom last night. Taking them to court for $150,000 isn’t solving anything, and you’re just attacking your potential fan base. The real criminals are the ones filming the movies in theaters or physically stealing digital copies and releasing them. Focus on THESE people. Prosecute THESE people. Then you’ll see some results.
Anyway, I’m sure that my way of looking at it isn’t perfect, but it is what I believe.
Movie Blog reader WolfMarauder gave me the heads up on this little story making its way around. Apparently not only do the MPAA want to continue persecuting little kids, college students and parents… they don’t even want to have to have the burden of “proving” the people are guilty in order to sue them. The tech site Crunchgear gives us this:
The MPAA may have some explaining to do following remarks of one of its lawyers in the Jammie Thomas trial. The remark in question, as written by Marie. L. van Uitert:
“It is often very difficult, and in some cases, impossible, to provide such direct proof when confronting modern forms of copyright infringement, whether over P2P networks or otherwise; understandably, copyright infringers typically do not keep records of infringement”
In other words, the MPAA shouldn’t have to provide “direct proof”—it’s pesky!—when suing old ladies, dopey college kids and John and Jane Does for as much as $150,000 per copyright violation. How does that make sense, in human terms? Never mind the $150,000 per copyright violation—movie tickets are, what, $10 these days?—but the MPAA believes it should be able to extract such funds merely because, you know, it’s “difficult” to prove any wrongdoing? Stunning.
You would be forgiven for being confused by this statement. I mean after all, how on earth can ask that they be allowed to convict people “without proof”, because hey… getting proof is really difficult. Well… in criminal court you can’t… but in CIVIL court, you can do just about anything.
You see, in Criminal Court, in order to be convicted the prosecution needs to produce proof that shows your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Beyond a reasonable doubt takes lots of evidence as applied by law. HOWEVER, in Civil court… where one party sues another… you don’t have to “prove” anything. The measuring stick is NOT based on Reasonable Doubt in civil cases, but rather on a balance of probability. All you have to do is convince the jury there is a 51% chance that the other party harmed you… and you win.
So you see… when the idiots at the MPAA want to sue little Johnny, they don’t have to PROVE he pirated the movie… they just have to convince a jury that there’s a good chance he may have. There is a BIG difference.
So the MPAA continues to use tactics of fear against the civilian population while letting the real criminals go unchecked. What a pack of idiots.
