Dark City
the life aquatic with steve zissou (which the MPAA nabbed me for)

Anything put out by an MPAA studio since my MPAA extortion incident

"In many ways, the movement against scientology is the same type of beast as a religious cult, with the vegetoid masses signing up to feel part of something noble and larger than life."

"I hold the same disgust toward scientology as I do toward judeo-christianity, which has delivered us the most violent century in ALL of human history, the 20th."

"So who do we blame for all of this? Well let's start with all of those organisations preaching religious tolerance. ... Think about if *your* religion would survive"

Yes, everyone is to blame. Everyone should die and join a suicide pact. Ok, I get it.

How about a pragmatic take on the recent Scientology events? Scientology much like MPAA and RIAA abuses copyright laws to bully people on the internet and sue and very litigious over clearly fair use. Therefore people are pissed off, especially culture warriors and the internets meme generators.

How about the fact that Scientology is a financial scam which pretends to be a "faith" in order for tax-free status and the exemption of "donations" for course fees. Forget the financial milking of their followers, it serves them right, but what about the tax-scam?

Who was the only group to infiltrate the US gov't including the IRS and DOJ? Was it Russia? Was it islamo-fascists? Nope, it was Scienologists and 11 of them (including Hubbard's wife) were convicted and sent to federal prison.

Scientology as acquired a massive portfolio of real estate all because of the tax shelters and loophole provided to them as a "Church" and "religion". How did they achieve such status? Seriously ask yourself that and do some research. Could YOU write a sci-fi slash religious text and get a group of 20 of your followers tax-free church status?

Also, why is it that a Jewish family that send their kids to a private school or religious camp cannot deduct those expenses, whereas scientologist can claim ALL of their course work, in the $100,000 in some cases, as donations? Why are these super rich Hollywood types allowed to pump all of this money tax free into this corporation.

If you still fail to see Scientology as a corporation, then ask yourself this, (aside from CBN) how many other religions have infomercials, amazon book stores, and also re-release all of their books and CDs every four years like it is a Star Wars franchise?

Does the Catholic church sell newly remastered and digitally restored DVDs? Seriously?

. . . And the MPAA would be dead WRONG.

^ and to budzos, new movies already suck on the whole, which is why it makes sense for some to not spend the cash just to see a lame flick. i don't know about int'l movies, but in the states bad movies are RAMPANT.

i agree that it makes a sort of catch-22, but on one hand you have movie execs with tons of money spending for the latest Happy Glimore (now featuring Tom Cruise!), marketing the hell out of it and then complaining that they just broke even thanks to all the Damn Pirates....and then there's the indy filmmakers actually making good movies that only release in Select Theatres, which not everyone can get to.....and people like me with dwindling time and money. I much prefer to pre-watch a film at home and determine whether i support it or not. if i do i will go to the theatre and see it, and later buy the dvd, although i'm not so starry-eyed as to expect that everyone does the same.

anyway, if i was the MPAA, i'd go after the people who are hawking unreleased movies on physical media...they're the ones actually making money off of other people's work....before going after the audiences themselves.

.02

i think that this is more a reply to the MPAA's video that sometimes shows up before theatrical screenings (and often on dvds, i know i have a few with it) that also confuses the property/IP lines by saying "you wouldn't steal X, so don't steal movies". in that light i think this vid's quite clever. in the MPAA's version it's all young people and it's every bit as ludicrous... every time it comes up i seethe about unfair copyright extensions (see also: Disney), and the deliberate blurring of intellectual property/actual property.

Hire better MPAA copyright research firms.

I'll not go into the other issues, but I think a lot of the DRM issues are being pushed by organizations like the RIAA and MPAA. I imagine their use of the heavy handed DRM is more a part of avoiding a lawsuit from those two organizations. Whether MS would win or not is irreverently since such a lawsuit would undoubtedly cost them a lot. And let us face it, all the RIAA and MPAA does is file lawsuits and fix prices. I'm really not even sure MS benefits from their DRM, mostly because apple seems to have the lions share, and then some, of the online music and video market. Pretty hard to compete when your product won't play on the most popular devices, unless compatibility has since been added.

On a side note, I think MS has gotten so big it now functions much like the government. At the core you have an idea of innovation (or at least using other people's good ideas) and true progress towards something that will benefit everyone. But then there are a bunch of special interest groups that push their agendas, so when the final product comes out it's some neutered monstrosity with some ugly appendages stapled on.

Netflix had this under details:

"Not rated. This movie has not been rated by the MPAA."

Often directors, who are adamant about NOT cutting their films, will go for "Not Rated" instead of the "NC-17" Kiss-of-Death.

This review I found discusses the film in a detailed way that may be helpful to folks who venture to watch it.

http://themovieboy.com/reviews/a/06_anothergaymovie.htm

Rotten Tomatoes had a number of varied observations as well:

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1162595-another_gay_movie/

With the millions of torrent users, I'm just a drop in the ocean. I'm not that nervous about anybody coming knocking on my door. The MPAA and RIAA have taken very little action against individual users, and they're very afraid of actually losing a case, so any hint of a losing argument and they'll run away. In fact, some people have won on the basis that an IP address is not a person.

And since when is TPB releasing info to the MPAA?? I need some sources on that, stat! It's almost every other week at this point where TPB comes up on Digg or TorrentFreak for their defiance against those that have tried suing them, and have you ever read their legal issues section on their website? Hilarious!

As a regular habit, Piratebay, Demonoid, and other major public trackers release information on their users to the MPAA etc., or don't change their operating protocols to prevent such information from becoming available. It's not their fault - they have to protect themselves legally. If you follow the spree of lawsuits that the RIAA and such go on, you'll see that about 95% of all such lawsuits for torrent downloading/uploading are on the top 5 to 10 major trackers.

It's not that I don't trust the site admins. It's that I don't trust that I'll be able to download something from their trackers without getting in trouble.

His arguments are significantly less fictitious then the RI/MPAAs arguments.

The fact of the matter is that a "movie deal" or a "recording contract" is a very bad loan where a small number of corporations use their hold on the distribution network to lock people out who don't take their shit loans.

This is why MP/RIAA are fighting so hard to stop new distribution systems, the "service" they provide to artists is so bad that any number of simple technological innovations provide a better service at a miniscule fraction of the cost to the artist. The only way for the MP/RIAA to win is to criminalize alternatives.

Primer http://www.videosift.com/video/Primer-Trailer is a perfect example of what kind of work can now be done and distributed at very low cost and high quality. The monolithic multi-million dollar film with all its expensive technological needs has been replaced with technology that any employed person in the industrialized world can afford to buy and use as a hobby.

The technology lock out is over, the distribution lockout is gone, only the capacity to criminalize/stigmatize the competition remains.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I don't know if "piracy" has much of a negative connotation these days. People love pirates. I give you Johnny Depp's latest. Pirates are cute, cool, retro.

I think they should call copying music and movies "puppy sodomy" that would be much more effective. Quick call the MPAA and the RIAA.

I'd downvote this if I could. Splitting a cookie in half is in no way analogous to "sharing" digital content. Just because the digital age has made pirating music and movies and tv shows easy, doesn't mean the act is any less immoral or illegal. Nor does the outrageous overreaction of groups like the MPAA and RIAA make theft any more justifiable.

I thought twice about that, but there's really nothing "mature" here. Comic violence at most - often rated G by mpaa!

JD, you forgot to mention the NWA, IHOP, C02, MPAA, HIV, AA, AAA, AT&T, TNT, FUBAR, and of course NAMBLA.