Quich-Er-Bichin

This evening, 60 Minutes ran a story covering movie piracy.    A terribly one-sided story

Unbelievable!  Both the RIAA and the MPAA site pirating as a the cause of their members’ declining sales.  No examination on the outrageous cost of movie tickets or CDs.

Remember Napster? The RIAA, got caught with their pants down on the change in technology, sued Napster out of existence, instead of co-opting the technology realizing that their customer based had changed from brick and mortar to electronic delivery.


Then both the RIAA and the MPAA convinced congress to create the most onerous legislation on consumer technologies – the DMCA.  This one piece of legislation has done more to stifle innovation and kill entrepreneurial development than any other law.  How many companies have been sued out of business?  321 Software is a perfect example: this company produced a simple tool to allow the consumer to make copies of their purchased DVDs so the originals could be stored away as backups.  You’ve just spent $29.95 on the new DVD and shouldn’t you, the consumer, be allowed to make a copy and keep the original stored as a back up?  If you drop that DVD, a single scratch will render it useless.

So now here we have 60 Minutes, usually reporting on the bad guys, being nothing more than a mouth piece for the MPAA.  There was not any attempt to examine the claims that piracy is really hurting the movie industry or that these pirated copies are anything other than just crap.  Ever try a bit torrent – how long does it take to down load just one 90 minute film – days.  What is the quality like – horrific.  Can you even find any torrent reliably – No!  And quite often the files are mis-labeled so you think you’ve just spent the past 36 hours downloading some cool action film and it turns out to be some chick flick or worse some religious message.  Where were the hard facts backing up the claims that piracy is really hurting the industry’s revenue?

And the worst part – the MPAA has got our law enforcement doing their work!  Why are we spending our police $$ busting down doors of suspected movie pirates?  The MPAA has all sorts of legals tools through civil actions.  If this is hurting them so badly, their members should foot the bill to take appropriate action.  Our police forces should be focused on real crimes – rape, murder, domestic violence.

Lastly, 60 Minutes, you have disappointed a long time viewer. This story was really nothing more than a editorial for the MPAA.  Shame on you.