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Google Movies Piracy Sony The Internet

Hollywood's Secret War With Google 176

cpt kangarooski writes: Information has come to light (thanks to the recent Sony hack) that the MPAA and six major studios are pondering the legal actions available to them to compel an entity referred to as 'Goliath,' most likely Google, into taking aggressive anti-piracy action on behalf of the entertainment industry. The MPAA and member studios Universal, Sony, Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros., and Disney have had lengthy email discussions concerning how to block pirate sites at the ISP level, and how to take action at the state level to work around the failure of SOPA in 2012. Emails also indicate that they are working with Comcast (which owns Universal) on some form of traffic inspection to find copyright infringements as they happen.
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Hollywood's Secret War With Google

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12, 2014 @06:26PM (#48586101)

    Corporate greed vs individual entitlement. Both extremes are wrong and harmful, and proponents will always use the slippery slope fallacy to prevent any kind of middle-ground from being established.

    This battle will never end.

    • by SuricouRaven ( 1897204 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @07:11PM (#48586397)

      You can see the same thing in the US debates on abortion and gun control. Both sides are afraid of incrimentalism by the other, which compels them to adopt the extremist position in order to prevent that strategy working.

      • That's very true. I mean, for one thing, you can do abortions much later in the USA than you can do in Sweden (later as in "late term abortions"). I guess even people who are supportive of abortion (but not supportive of late term abortions) will defend late term abortions simply because they fear that making them illegal will affect conventional abortions.

        • by Uberbah ( 647458 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @09:30PM (#48587065)

          I guess even people who are supportive of abortion (but not supportive of late term abortions) will defend late term abortions simply because

          Simply because no one gets a dilatation and extraction for shits and giggles.

          because they fear that making them illegal will affect conventional abortion

          It has been the standard operating procedure ever since Roe v Wade: chip away at abortion without passing an Ireland-style ban. Because shit happens when medical decisions are made by religious fanatics [thinkprogress.org] rather than doctors.

          • You're right. Simply banning abortion doesn't get through courts, so the accepted pro-life strategy is to make sure abortion is legal yet as impractical as possible. They pass safety standards for clinics that are impossible to meet. They pass requirements that doctors have admitting privilege at a nearby hospital, knowing that many hospitals will refuse to grant such to any doctor who performs elective abortion. They mandate patients be emotionally blackmailed by forcing them to look at 3D ultrasounds for

          • by Rich0 ( 548339 )

            because they fear that making them illegal will affect conventional abortion

            It has been the standard operating procedure ever since Roe v Wade: chip away at abortion without passing an Ireland-style ban. Because shit happens when medical decisions are made by religious fanatics [thinkprogress.org] rather than doctors.

            That was the original point - "Both sides are afraid of incrimentalism by the other, which compels them to adopt the extremist position in order to prevent that strategy working."

            Both sides are forced to take extreme positions. Thus we have wars over things where otherwise there might be compromise. The case you cited is an example that actually touches on both abortion and euthanasia, which are both incredibly controversial topics. In the US euthanasia is illegal even when consented to by a completely c

    • There's no comparison between college students and wage slaves downloading from TPB and conglomerates like Disney or Sony, who between them have the better part of $200 billion in market capitalization.

    • by blahplusplus ( 757119 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @09:21PM (#48587045)

      Corporate greed vs individual entitlement. Both extremes are wrong and harmful

      You're a moron if you believe this...

      The myth of "balance" in capitalist societies:

      http://homepages.law.asu.edu/~... [asu.edu]

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... [wikipedia.org]

      Overthrowing governments

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      http://www.amazon.com/War-Rack... [amazon.com]

      "I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil intersts in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested." [p. 10]

      "War is a racket. ...It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." [p. 23] "The general public shoulders the bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations." [p. 24]

      The 9 trillion dollar bank bailout

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

      Libor scandal

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org]

      Rule of law is impossible under capitalism, since the kings of business (he who has the gold makes the rules) get to do whatever they want and the public gets fucked.

      http://williamblum.org/ [williamblum.org]

      So if you want to fight corruption "the traditional way" (electoral politics), you're dead in the water because most people aren't going to give up their deeply felt emotions and aren't very bright. This way of doing things is limited because of the limits of history and the amount of energy it takes to transform the minds of a large population and the fact that the media is co-opted. There are things that can be done but you'd have to be really committed and not a change the world 'faker' like most people are (aka they don't want to risk anything).

      http://therealnews.com/t2/ [therealnews.com]

      You need to know that most people who are voting in electoral politics don't live in reality (that's a sizeable chunk, many millions of people, totally oblivious). The real news is the cure for that. Hang out in places where smart people exist, avoid traditional media mostly and always keep them at arms length.

      • by hackus ( 159037 )

        "The 9 trillion dollar bank bailout."

        Gad.

        Do you realize what tech we could build with 9 trillion dollars?

        We could go to alpha centauri for lunch, and be back just in time for dinner.

        What a human and monetary waste of potential. Whoever approved that are enemies of the human race

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Whatever happened in between the Hollywood studios and Google don't worry as much as the following:

      Emails also indicate that they are working with Comcast (which owns Universal) on some form of traffic inspection to find copyright infringements as they happen

      My question being this --- are the 'traffic inspection' legal?

      • No, it is illegal wiretapping punishable by 21 years in prison. However, it will be made legal for them once they've figured out how to do it, simply because they are large corporations.

    • Corporate greed vs individual entitlement.

      NO! Not "individual entitlement". Individual privacy. Huge difference.

      Why should I allow Universal to spy on my Internet communications? Would you allow AT&T to spy on your phone conversations? Why or why not?

      This is a big fight and it isn't about "entitlement", at all. It's about freedom and privacy. Get it straight.

    • invidual entitlement

      what the fuck? rights are not entitlement. This is the moderation falicy.

      Its generally used by so called "centrists", to take an outrageous claim, presented next to a rational one, and then compare the outrageous claim to the legitimate one, and then say "lets meet in the middle", demanding the person with the rational claim give up their rights in order to appease a made up argument.

  • by mmell ( 832646 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @06:26PM (#48586107)
    Your search - Sony - did not match any documents.

    Nor did Movie title, or Sony BMG artist. Why is nobody going to see our movies or buy our artists' music?

    • by realmolo ( 574068 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @06:30PM (#48586129)

      YES.

      I hope Google does this.

      "Oh, you're suing us? You want us to be a copyright enforcement agency? Fine. We're not going to index ANY of your stuff. Or the stuff of any of your divisions. Or any of the stuff of any companies you have a controlling interest in. Plus, we're going to block their networks from accessing any of our services. Good luck."

      • by Anonymous Coward

        it continues... "oh, and side note, totally unrelated. We're starting our own music and movie studio side companies.
        Entities which will pay most of the profit/royalties directly to the artists, set designers and general people who actually worked on the production. You wouldn't know any artists which would be interested in that would you"

        • by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @07:05PM (#48586355) Homepage Journal

          Hollywood in comparison to the top tier US tech companies is tiny in terms of revenue and profit. If the techs got together and purchased the studios, they could make it go away.

          • Hollywood in comparison to the top tier US tech companies is tiny in terms of revenue and profit. If the techs got together and purchased the studios, they could make it go away.

            Purchase and *open source* the studios....

            • I was thinking more along the lines of letting them make music and movies, but just stopping all the DRM nonsense and purchasing of congress.

          • The techs don't even need to get together. Any one of the top ten tech firms could buy all of Hollywood on their own. I'm not sure why this hasn't happened already, buy all (or most) the studios, then introduce a 21st century business model and monopolise on the content. We all know people are willing to pay for content if it could be distributed effectively, it just needs someone born after to 1937 to make it happen.
          • Hollywood in comparison to the top tier US tech companies is tiny in terms of revenue and profit. If the techs got together and purchased the studios, they could make it go away.

            Sony actually did this, remember? They were a tech company that bought a studio and we all thought "Great, now that sensible tech companies have started buying control over content we won't have to put up with this shit much longer."

            Only, it turned out that the content part of Sony won and instead of tech whipping content into shape, it was the other way around.

            So be careful what you wish for... Being able to control the narrative (which is what control over content allows you to do) will always have a pret

        • it continues... "oh, and side note, totally unrelated. We're starting our own music and movie studio side companies.
          Entities which will pay most of the profit/royalties directly to the artists, set designers and general people who actually worked on the production. You wouldn't know any artists which would be interested in that would you"

          ...and that has the potential to do the most damage to Hollywood, I think. Hollywood's entire business model is built around the truism that to be successful in the music and movie industry requires massive physical resources managed by huge corporations with huge numbers of connections. New entertainment business models are arising that don't involve Hollywood at all. Hollywood still controls a huge amount of money, but you can see which way things are heading, and it appears to be away from giant mono

      • That's fine, they can do that. But people will know that these things exist, will assume Google is broken, and go to Yahoo, or Bing, or some other search engine to find them. If it keeps up, after a while, people will stop going to Google for anything at all, because they'll assume it's always 'broken'. Google will run itself into the ground.
      • by MarkvW ( 1037596 )

        Doesn't that indicate that Google has just way too much market dominance if they have the power to do that?

        • Not at all.

          In a market with free choice (and despite the noise, there IS free choice in the search engine market) , people use Google because they trust it. If they stop trusting, they go elsewhere.

          The same applies to DNSBLs.

          Hollywood and the "entertainment industry" are so far removed from reality that they don't realise they're tiny fish in a big pond and annoying the big fish too much _will_ result in their being removed from the pond.

          All it would take is Comcast accountants pointing out that they can ma

      • by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12, 2014 @08:13PM (#48586713)

        I actually think this is the very best move possible. Which will no doubt provide the best result for consumers who should actually have the power in business transactions. The customer is always right, right?

        Interestingly enough I haven't downloaded a movie in a very long time. When I was downloading I actually used to go see more movies, I kind of felt it was my responsibility to provide some income to the industry for taking some, levelling it out by balancing what I accord afford (no more than 1 a month) and what I actually considered was a good movie.

        Now I don't go to see any. I wouldn't have a clue what's out. It is no longer convenient for me to access. And I'm not going to pay for an inferior DRM riddled experience. Full stop.

        The most the industry is getting out of me at the moment is that I have come across a few films of Youtube. These tend to be older movies or foreign movies, and their is huge potential for them to at least earn something through the ads. But I'm not going to pay. Sorry, but the economic climate is not in the common man''s favour. It is no longer the golden years post world war 2, when the average sales man earned only a little bit less than a CEO and could buy a house and support a family on that income. Currently, on a good wage quite above the median, if I save all my money bar minimum expenses for food, rent and petrol I am going to struggle to buy a house by the time I retire - in 35 years. To put this in comparison, my mother managed to buy a house fresh out of university on a single income and was mortgage free 15 years later. With inflation accounted for, we earn very similar amounts.

        I simply can not afford to give companies more.

        And all the while I watch a multimillionaire (Taylor Swift) complaining that she is not getting paid enough by Spotify. That's all fine and dandy, except she should be glad people are willing to give her any more at all. She is already rich beyond peoples wildest dreams, famous and basking in that glory. Now I wouldn't listen to that kind of music any way. My music tastes have always been so obscure that the Music industry has never even been able to provide for me. 15 years ago I had to download, because there were none of the modern internet services, there were no CDs in the stores for the bands I liked either, because most of them weren't American.

        Through my life time I have already given the recording industry combined thousands of dollars in CD purchases however, just recently I through out my ageing CD collection of well over 200 CDs, all purchased for between $15 and $30 between 1995 and 2005. And I came to the sudden realisation that music has no value to me at all. - not through Mp3s - through the rubbish.

        Now if you have read everything I have posted so far, you will have probably gauged that in my personal situation I am relatively concerned about my finances. And for this reason I do have some sympathy for the industries as a whole, I am fully aware that there are some people, such as technicians and all the other various roles you see in the ending credits of a movie who might be struggling. I think this is sad, because the actors still get paid exorbitant amounts. Especially considering the fact that an actor is essentially a professional liar.

        So my message to the people in charge of these companies is, the best hope you've got of earning anything from me is providing it for free. There are other things I want in life which matter more to me. And I can do with out quite happily. A good book gives me far more joy, over a longer time, for a similar price.

        Go figure.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Sony deserves the right to be forgotten.

      • If the tiny industries of Hollywood and the four record companies sue for trillions, then start taxing that value. An IP tax. Pay up or lower the damage claims. Quid pro quo.

    • Even better:

      You searched "Sony". Here are the names, SSN, and phone number of every Sony employee. Click here to sign them all up for hourly Cat Facts.

  • Shocking! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Shocking to find the liberal hollywood elite are quite illiberal after all.

    • Re:Shocking! (Score:5, Informative)

      by jedidiah ( 1196 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @06:32PM (#48586137) Homepage

      The liberal Hollywood elite sold out to megacorp bean counters a long time ago. Now the studios are nothing more than subsidaries of large global conglomerates.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

    • Re:Shocking! (Score:5, Informative)

      by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @06:37PM (#48586187) Journal

      I think you're confusing the actors and directors with the studios. Those groups have very often been very liberal, but the studio heads care only about money, and they will cozy up with anyone they think has it, and attack anyone who dares threaten it. If real fascists took over the United States tomorrow, Hollywood would quite happily begin producing films supporting that ideology. Essentially, the heads of the big studios are soulless accountants and lawyers.

      • Re:Shocking! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Noah Haders ( 3621429 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @06:52PM (#48586281)

        If real fascists took over the United States tomorrow, Hollywood would quite happily begin producing films supporting that ideology.

        you mean like the TV show "24" or the CoD series or Pacific Rim or The Butler or Fantastic Mr Bush.

        • 24 supports fascism? How exactly??

          • Re:Shocking! (Score:5, Insightful)

            by LessThanObvious ( 3671949 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @08:03PM (#48586667)

            Not sure of the specifics on "24", but many cop drama's like "Criminal Minds" dumb down the viewers perception of their rights. They always seem to be able to instantly find any information about anyone through online means including by hacking and there is absolutely zero discussion of a warrant or any approval. It's just OK because they are trying to catch the super evil bad guy. If your perception of the constitution, your rights and the limitations on police power where based on television, you likely wouldn't have a clue what they are actually supposed to be allowed to do. From the few episodes of "24" I've seen I believe the same issues exist there.

            • Actually what I find most awful about CSI shows is the notion that police investigations are akin to unbeatable magical formulas. If investigators zero in on a suspect, almost inevitably that suspect is guilty, and found to be so by incredible technologies used by beautiful people in sci-fi like laboratories. Even in slightly more realistic portrayals of criminal investigations, like the original Law And Order, seldom is the accused actually innocent, but rather he or she manages to elude justice through so

              • by Mal-2 ( 675116 )

                Actually what I find most awful about CSI shows is the notion that police investigations are akin to unbeatable magical formulas. If investigators zero in on a suspect, almost inevitably that suspect is guilty, and found to be so by incredible technologies used by beautiful people in sci-fi like laboratories.

                Actually, for dramatic reasons, a good fraction of the shows feature chasing after a red herring, or narrowing in on one suspect who turns out to be either an accomplice or merely connected to the actual perp (without actual involvement). Boyfriend taking the rap for girlfriend who killed someone, mother accused when actually one of her kids did it, etc. If they started in the right place every time, it would be boring.

            • by Kjella ( 173770 )

              Well, if you made a list of fields TV portrays accurately it'd fit on a very small business card. We shake our heads at the use of computers and technology, doctors shake their heads at medicine and I bet cops and lawyers shake their heads at the depiction of police work and the law too. For that matter I bet drug dealers and the mafia shake their heads at Weeds and Sopranos too. I'm not saying that you're wrong but it's in the nature of television to wildly misrepresent reality for dramatic effect, even i

              • Well, if you made a list of fields TV portrays accurately it'd fit on a very small business card. We shake our heads at the use of computers and technology, doctors shake their heads at medicine....

                The problem with your analogies is that Hollywood's portrayal of technology and medicine don't change public opinion in a truly harmful manner. Not so with their portrayal of law enforcement work. Read about the "CSI effect":

                http://apps.americanbar.org/li... [americanbar.org]

                That's not to mention shows like "cops" where a drug search *always* yields drugs whereas in real life they had to throw as much film on the cutting room floor because it showed the cops tearing up someone's car and finding nothing, and we can't have t

            • Ok, but nothing you said has anything to do with fascism

              • No, not specifically. I only mean in general sense that the less people understand their rights the less apt they are to defend them and the more people accept increasing government power the more apt we are to create an environment where such a regime could thrive. I wouldn't technically categorize anything currently happening in the U.S. as fascism.

          • Ugh, the only thing "24" supports in me is dizziness. I can't watch shows filmed in "drunken cameraman" style.

          • by jschrod ( 172610 )

            24 supports fascism?

            Of course, 24 doesn't suport fascism. Actually, I don't think that the producers know what facism is at all, judging from the story.

            It's only an outrageus plot that wants to demonstrate that the USA has no problem in torturing and killing people who's innocence is not quite clear. Or, where it's known. But, there -- according to the series plot, the hero is the hero because he's not hindered by those pesky human rights. Let's kill those bastards!! Actually, 24 is the perfect serieis t

      • by Ichijo ( 607641 )

        If real fascists took over the United States tomorrow...

        Considering that fascism is closely associated with dirigism [wikipedia.org], where a government exerts a strong directive influence over the means of production, we're already there [businessweek.com] in spirit if not in name.

        • There is no government that does not influence industry. If there was no government influence of business, business would BE our government.

      • If real fascists took over the United States tomorrow,

        You mean, like politicians who took over large sectors of the economy while pretending to leave private companies in charge of it?

        Good thing that hasn't happened yet!

      • by yuhong ( 1378501 )

        I know. I wonder how these kinds of people got there in the first place.

  • by anarkhos ( 209172 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @06:35PM (#48586171)

    Why isn't this front page news everywhere?

    General Info and Links:
    Full text of the bill can be found here.
    https://www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/4681
    White House petition:
    https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/protect-our-privacy-and-please-veto-hr-4681-aka-intelligence-authorization-act-fiscal-year-2015/lln5hN5c
    Justin Amash's Facebook Post:
    https://www.facebook.com/repjustinamash/posts/812569822115759
    Locate your reps:
    http://www.opencongress.org/people/zipcodelookup
    This is especially important. Find your congressman and let him know you hate this
    How your reps voted:
    http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2014/roll271.xml

    • First: on the passage of SOPA, those damn fuckers, unbelievable. Second: If Comcast starts inspecting my traffic, I am absolutely going to lose my shit. Canceling my service is not nearly enough. It's not the job of a customer's ISP to police their activity.

      • by zlives ( 2009072 )

        too late

      • Comcast inspecting traffic would be the biggest dumbshit move they could make. They do that, they loose safe harbor. No way they can claim safe harbor if they are inspecting the traffic traversing their network. That wonderful piece of legislation that the media companies shoved down our throats called the DMCA is very specific when it come to the "Safe Harbor" provision.
        Go ahead comcast start inspecting traffic, then get sued by the MAFIA.

      • relax.

        get yourself a VPN (I do and I have comcast) and they cannot spy on me. simply cannot - while my vpn is active.

        now,they do what they can to stop my connection. several times a day I get a reset from them and even more times, I have to reboot my docsis modem since I get no more pings from my default router. not sure what they are trying to pull, but I easily work around that.

        so, find a vpn provider (privateinternetaccess is one that is cheap and not too shabby) and use it!

        use it on your phone, too.

      • There is nothing we can do about that anymore. The curtain is falling. The last police state, the one that cannot be fought.

    • Okay, I just skimmed the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015 that you posted a link for. I can't see any SOPA there. Would you care to point out where it is, either in this act or in something you failed to link to?

    • by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12, 2014 @07:56PM (#48586635)

      This is not SOPA 2. It's pretty bad, but it's entirely unlike SOPA. See the discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8740339

      I know that it's a time-consuming thing to do, but it's very important to read legislation before accepting media reports about it. Because journalists are often as lazy as Congresscritters, the news is often wrong about everything but the title of a particular piece of legislation.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12, 2014 @06:38PM (#48586193)

    Altavista

  • by s1d3track3D ( 1504503 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @06:39PM (#48586209)
    and I thought net neutrality was about throttling.... I didn't realize how much money was opposing net neutrality and the actual reasons.
    Comcast (Universal) doesn't need SOPA if the can win the net neutrality battle.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    So read it on TD https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141212/12142629419/leaked-emails-reveal-mpaa-plans-to-pay-elected-officials-to-attack-google.shtml [techdirt.com]

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Comcast (ISP) owns Universal, who blames Google for linking to copyrighted content which is distributed by Comcast?

  • Poor souls (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 12, 2014 @06:48PM (#48586257)
    I just want to take a moment, at this sympathetic time of year, to say that I really feel for the poor souls who are (or should I say were) responsible for security at Sony. We've all got issues, but those folks must be in a dark place now. For what it's worth I blame the execs who skimped on the IT security budget.
    • by Rich0 ( 548339 )

      I just want to take a moment, at this sympathetic time of year, to say that I really feel for the poor souls who are (or should I say were) responsible for security at Sony. We've all got issues, but those folks must be in a dark place now. For what it's worth I blame the execs who skimped on the IT security budget.

      People seem to claim that Sony is particularly lax at security, but most of the solutions I see are tinfoil-hat territory - disconnect from the internet and such.

      If Sony took the kinds of measures people seem to propose, they'd go out of business since their competitors would be far more efficient. You can't just turn the dial back to the 90s and pretend the internet didn't happen.

      I don't have a solution. What Sony did is what virtually every company around does. I'm sure we'll see more hacks like this h

  • by jtara ( 133429 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @07:28PM (#48586497)

    There's no secret here. Perhaps some old memos used codewords, though.

    Pretty sure it is Cox, which has refused to go along with draconian measures that are not required by law.

    We have Cox service here in San Diego (at least parts). It's one reason I will not live north of Interstate 8, which is Comcast territory. The difference is night and day.

    Comcast pulls all this anti-consumer BS and under-delivers on services.

    Cox doesn't put up with it and goes to bat for their customers on privacy. They also over-deliver on services. (I have always got higher than advertised Internet speeds. I currently get 120mbit/sec down/20mbps up on a 100/10 plan, and they just doubled the bandwidth from 50/5 to 100/10.)

    Both Comcast and Cox are expensive. You can't have everything.

    • by Megane ( 129182 )
      Well, actually, Google is an ISP, just not a major one. Ever hear of Google Fiber?
  • I'm sure there was a lot of laughter over the hack in the offices of Sony Pictures' competitors over the last few days. Now that industry-wide strategy stuff from the leak like this is starting to get attention I wonder if they are still quite so amused...
  • ...and Disney

    Who's the largest Disney shareholder and who declared thermo nuclear war on Google?

  • Emails also indicate that they are working with Comcast (which owns Universal) on some form of traffic inspection to find copyright infringements as they happen.

    Doesn't this cause Comcast to forfeit 'Common Carrier' status under laws like the DMCA? My understanding was that ISPs basically said "we can't be held liable for copyright infringement because we can't monitor everything going across our wires for violations" and the government agreed that it all made sense. If Comcast now actually can monitor all the content rolling across its wires without any apparent undue burden, can't every copyright owner then sue Comcast for infringement if it isn't actively removi

  • > Emails also indicate that they are working with Comcast (which owns Universal) on some form of traffic inspection to find copyright infringements as they happen.

    Yet another reason not to do business with Comcast. As if we needed one.

  • by SolitaryMan ( 538416 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @09:02PM (#48586929) Homepage Journal
    While they keep fighting their own customers, Indie artists and movie makers are slowly eating their market share. Seriously, even these days I can find enough quality shows and even movies to watch on YouTube. Give it another XY years and Hollywood would be squeezed into some small niche market only few people will care about and I will not be one of them.
    • by k6mfw ( 1182893 )

      Seriously, even these days I can find enough quality shows and even movies to watch on YouTube.

      but (at least for me) I have to use AT&T or comcast for internet service, which I find is marginal for watching video. Work site is great but that's not what work is for. Other than that, Youtube can be a huge time pit with so many interesting things posted by various people.

    • by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

      Right, a few years ago, a musician told me : the real threat to the majors is not bittorrent, it's myspace.
      i.e. indie artist getting known via social networks and self-publishing. Piracy may lower their profits, but if they lose control of promotion and distribution, they are dead.

  • so blow me, comcast.

    the more you try to fuck us over, the more you'll find 'streams of strange octets' hitting your switches and routers.

    in fact, even if you don't fuck us over, this is going to happen.

    the net IS going encrypted. count on it.

    so, enjoy your fucking DPI while it lasts. your spying gravy train won't keep running forever.

    • by wierd_w ( 1375923 ) on Saturday December 13, 2014 @12:17AM (#48587609)

      Dont worry, Eric Holder (and slimy filth like him) will go crying to congress, telling them all about how but-hurt strong elliptical curve crypto makes them because it stops them being able to indiscriminately decode all that data going over the inter-tubes. (Gotta use language the congress critters understand you know.) "Normal citizens should have nothing to hide, and thus shouldn't have any reason to use such dangerous, 'munitions grade' cryptography!" they will whine. "Such strong crypto should only be used by government agencies, and we should have a strong hand in approving publicly used cryptographic libraries and functions!" they will sob at the congressional hearing. "Imagine how terrible it would be if Osama Bin-Laden had been able to fully encrypt all of his traffic end-to-end, and was able to use redundant, distributed proxies to hide his location!", and other such "oooh! Spooky! Baaaaad things will happen if we cant keep our tentacles in everyone's stuff!" type arguments.

      Just look at how butt-hurt they are already about google and apple implementing strong full-device crypto on android and ios devices. You can bet they would be moaning about how sandy their manginas feel if full end-to-end strong encryption with strong, true-random keys were to be used at every point on the internet.

      "Why, we would have to actually use real agents that arent just jackbooted thugs in uniform, and use actual detective and police work to have government intelligence instead of just dumping hundreds of terabytes of collected feeds into a giant sorting and collating algorithm! Think about how much that would reduce our response times should a major terrorist action be started! Why, we might not even know about it until it happened! WHooooo! Scary! Better give us what we want so you can feel safe!"

      And, at that point, you would end up with government mandated weaknesses in your VPN security, in your proxies, and even in your very network switches themselves. Perhaps even wholly secondary channels tracking routing to collect data exchange meta-data to help identify "suspicious" use patterns, etc.

      Eric Holder and his slimewad cock-goblin friends would be all over that shit like stink on shit, and the corrupt and horribly incompetent congress critters would be wiggling their asses every which way to give it to them. Bet on it.

      • by sowth ( 748135 )

        Yes, then shortly after they introduce the backdoors, Russian and Chinese "hackers" will exploit them to steal everyone's credit card info, ssn, secret blueprints, celebrity nudes, and etc. But of course, no one in the media will make the connection between the backdoors and breakins.

  • they have been at war with google for years now look how badly they got them to brake youtube to the point even legit stuff gets flagged by fake shadow company's just to harass channels. and even there sad attempts to block less then legit sites.
  • Why not wrap it up in the BS that is Net neutrality and then they can let the government be their lapdogs footing the bill to find "copyright infringement" like they always have?

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