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Controversial college antipiracy bill nears House vote

The U.S. House of Representatives is preparing to vote as soon as Thursday on a mammoth higher-education funding bill that contains new antipiracy obligations for most universities.

Only this time around, it appears that an attempt may be made to water down the thorny new requirements included in the College Opportunity and Affordability Act (PDF). It's not clear, however, that such changes, if adopted, would be enough to appease university officials concerned about the measure.

Here's the deal: right now, a small section of the bill, which sailed through the House Education and Labor Committee last fall, … Read more

Why did colleges stay mum on MPAA stats?

Correction: This blog initially mischaracterized the statistics that Heidemann commented on. He was referring to claims made about overall P2P use and not specifically about the MPAA's allegations.

John Heidemann was skeptical about what the movie industry was saying about campus piracy.

A researcher in the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California, Heidemann had heard the film studios' claim that college students downloading movies on campus were responsible for 44 percent of the industry's domestic losses to piracy.

That added up to about $572 million. So, working with a team of researchers last summer--the famous … Read more

Why the MPAA and RIAA can't stand college students

According to a recent report from the Associated Press, the Motion Picture Association of America--Hollywood's antipiracy wing--admitted to releasing data that was not only factually incorrect, it grossly overstated the impact college students have on the movie industry's losses.

The MPAA claims its original figure citing a 44 percent loss due to college piracy was inflated by a whopping 29 percent. In fact, the MPAA admitted that the actual impact college students have on the industry's revenue loss is just 15 percent.

"The 44 percent figure was used to show that if college campuses could somehow solve this problem on this campus, then it would make a tremendous difference in the business of the motion picture industry," an expert covering the case said. The new figures prove "any solution on campus will have only a small impact on the industry itself."

So why do the MPAA and the Recording Industry Association of America focus so much of their time on college students? Is there something that these disgusting organizations aren't telling us? Are college students really that bad? Sadly, it's just another example of these organizations trying to vilify the easy target when the real violators are left to roam free.… Read more

LionsGate: Piracy a major deciding factor for Blu-ray support

At CES on Monday, I was invited over to the Blu-ray booth to speak with top executives at the major Hollywood studios supporting Blu-ray. And while I didn't have the chance to speak with every studio, I did get to speak with the president and chief operating officer at LionsGate, Steve Beeks.

And while Beeks seemed like he had solid command over the finer points of the movie industry, I was interested to see why his studio chose Blu-ray over the alternative.

Expecting the canned answer like, "Well, we thought it was the superior format and I'm happy to say that we were right," you could imagine my surprise when the very first reason he gave was Blu-ray's piracy controls.

For those of you who don't know, Blu-ray's piracy controls--largely based on AACS, BD+, and BD-ROM Mark--are easily the most stringent format to date and have only partially been circumvented to this point.

Regardless, I was utterly appalled at the thought that with all of its benefits--high-capacity, interesting new features to employ while playing movies, major industry backing--Beeks chose piracy as the first talking point.

Of course, I had to find out more.… Read more

It's the acronym from hell contest

NVMHCIWG--Baby, remember my name.

I've spent more than a decade reporting on the tech industry--with most of that time logged into the squirrely world of processors and memory--and come across a lot of abbreviations and acronyms. At Intel, Craig Barrett isn't known at Craig Barrett--he's CRB. Then there was the ORBA and CORBA confusion.

And who could forget the time that HANA and DLRA (formerly DHWG) were competing with each other to win the support of the UWBF, ATSC and MPAA? It took three dictionaries and a Ouija board to sort out the conflicts. (And it spells … Read more

RIAA, MPAA urge pro-copyright vows from presidential candidates

A coalition of entertainment and publishing industry heavyweights would like to see the 2008 presidential candidates champion "meaningful copyright protection" in their policy platforms.

The requests came Tuesday in the form of a letter (PDF) and a questionnaire (PDF), dispatched by the Washington-based Copyright Alliance to 17 candidates vying for Democratic or Republican nominations next year. The group has requested responses to its questionnaire by early January of next year and plans to make the answers public.

The alliance's 44 members include the Recording Industry Association of America, Motion Picture Association of America, Association of American Publishers, … Read more

MPAA: Linking college funding, piracy is 'perfectly legitimate'

WASHINGTON--What's wrong with Congress being a little stingy about doling out taxpayer dollars to universities if they let peer-to-peer file-sharing pirates run amok on campus networks?

Not a thing, says the Motion Picture Association of America's top lawyer in the nation's capital.

On the heels of a House of Representatives committee's passage of a higher-education funding bill that includes new antipiracy obligations for universities that participate in federal financial aid programs, MPAA Washington general counsel Fritz Attaway suggested it's reasonable to condition federal education funding on copyright enforcement efforts.

"When the government is subsidizing … Read more