The MPAA loved suing grandmothers for piracy and teenagers for sharing a movie on Bit Torrent. They always have the same justification:
What is copyright protection and why is it important? The MPAA is committed to promoting copyright protection and other intellectual property protection, so those who create movies, software, music or other works can make a living by creating products that enrich all our lives.
I guess that sort of protection doesn’t apply to software, huh?
There is an update to the story, though. The MPAA caught wind that Patrick was a bit pissed off (I imagine the story being on Digg didn’t hurt much) and he wrote a followup on his website, first a clip from the e-mail:
The material has been removed from our Web server.
* No Web links were ever provided to the blog.
* The blog was never assigned a domain name.
* The blog was never advertised to the public in any way.
* The material on the server was a proof of concept awaiting approval to move into production.
* The blog was only ever used for testing purposes.
* Should we have decided to make the move to production, then we would have paid the 25 Pounds that would have authorized us to run a version of the blog without the logos and links.
He then made an interesting observation:
Whilst that all sounds fair enough but I doubt I’d get away with pirating a few movies providing I didn’t advertise it and only used them for testing purposes. hmmm!
Nice job of the MPAA protecting intellectual property. The word hypocrite doesn’t even begin to describe it.
Technorati Tags: hypocrite, mpaa, bullshit, thief, piracy
