Friday, 19 September 2014 20:29

The MPAA Is Putting Out a Very Bad Message

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There is a subtle art to influencing people’s opinions and the way that a particular topic is viewed. We have seen multiple attempts at this, some good, some bad. For the marketing savvy it seems that nothing they (or their charges) say can ever be negative. For those that are… less competent the message come out all wrong and often changes the intended push into something very negative. The MPAA and others in the anti-piracy community seem to be in the latter group.

As an example look at what they are doing with Pirate Bay founder Peter Sunde. The copyright gang have decided that the crime of sharing content is so great that Sunde is being kept in the same manner that a violent criminal. The industry appears to have asked for this treatment in order to deter others from the “crime” of piracy. The outrageous treatment has gone so far that Sunde might be required to wear handcuffs during his Father’s funeral. At what point does this become a deterrent and turn into cruel and unusual.

The bad PR campaign has not stopped there though as we see what might be Hollywood influence in a recent report on cyberlocker services. Cyberlockers are not the same as cloud storage service as the former often uses referral codes embedded in links, push out malware (again embedded in links) and other less honest items. A traditional cloud storage service does not do any of these things and also has usually tries to ensure their users are not attempting any of these things either.

The report was put out by NetNames for the Digital Citizens Alliance and chose to include a Mega in their report and claims that they are a cyberlocker service. As you might have imagined this annoyed the people over at Mega. They have countered the report and are asking for not only a retraction, but a public apology.

So why put out a report like this? In the simplest terms reports like this are not often read by the average person. They are intended for industry insiders and also for other more politically oriented people. Having Mega included in a report on cyberlockers (remember that in Washington cyber is a big word) begins the negative campaign against them. The end state of this campaign is not certain, but we have a feeling that it will end up with another power grab by Hollywood through the US DoJ.

The industry needs to make sure that they build up the proper background for their renewed push against all things related to Kim Dotcom. They have already stated that they want to punish him and also to make him suffer. Although not as bad as what they are doing to Peter Sunde, this move shows their true colors and also how far they are willing to go to get what they want. This is not about revenue anymore, it is about exercising their power and destroying anyone that attempts to get in the way or make a change to the way we share content on the internet.

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Read 5513 times Last modified on Friday, 19 September 2014 20:32

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