MPAA wants parents, teachers to rat on their kids

Quakester2000

November 19, 2004

GristyMcFisty used our news submit to tell us that the MPAA
(Motion Picture Association of America) has thought of a new way of splitting up the family. The MPAA's new piece of software that will search and seek out pirate movies on a computer are hoping encourage parents to report their children to the authorities.

The companies that want to combat piracy had initially thought of spy ware like software that would install itself automatically and remove all mp3 files from the computer. The idea of automatically installing software was immediately dropped as legal challenges and lawsuits could have hit these companies had this plan been put into use.

The MPAA is hoping that worried parents will volunteer to install their new software that will search out and flag pirated movies on a computer and delete them. With the consent of the parent the MPAA will be able to avoid any lawsuits as well as identify the infringers of copyright. The new software will allow parents to report their children or through the MPAA's new DARE scheme children will able to report their parents. Earlier this summer the MPAA's was found to have exaggerated movie piracy statistics for movie sharing on the internet.

In a fight against these companies and their smart anti piracy blitzes a Pro culture group called Downhill Battle is trying to alert kids to misleading information given to them by the MPAA and RIAA. The group are trying to educate kids about the dangers of Willie the Weasel who is employed by the RIAA / MPAA and goes from school to school to educate kids about piracy.

Conservatives often accuse Hollywood of failing to pay heed to "family values", but the Motion Picture Ass. of America"s latest initiative is designed to split families right down the middle. The MPAA hopes that new software will encourage parents to turn their children over to the authorities as file-sharing felons.The software, designed to identify potentially infringing material on the home PC, is part of the MPAA"s war on file sharing and will be released for free by the MPAA at a later date.

As expected, the MPAA filed its first John Doe suits against file sharers today.The copyright lobbyists have raised the prospect of snoopware before, and last year disclosed that they had developed two pieces of spyware, one of which invaded the PC and then tagged and destroyed MP3 files.

This threat was more apparent than real, as any such software would be criminal and the RIAA would have faced a barrage of lawsuits. But by hoping that anxious parents will install the software themselves, thus giving consent, the MPAA can get round its most pressing problem: that it doesn"t really know who the infringers are. In every home, the MPAA hopes, is an informer: an anxious parent.The DARE program encourages children to rat out their parents, so the Stalinist precedent has already been set in the United States (perhaps it"s been here since Salem).

This summer, the MPAA was embarrassed after using bogus statistics to exaggerate the level of movie trading on the Internet. Pro-culture group Downhill Battle is fighting back with a campaign to alert kids to the dangers of Willie the Weasel, who represents misleading copyright information being targeted at school children by the BSA and the MPAA.

Looks like profits mean more than the family anymore. Parents ratting out their children or vice versa sounds like they are trying to employ secret police everywhere.

Source: The Register