| Comment Number: | OL-100008 |
| Received: | 11/9/2004 12:59:31 AM |
| Organization: | WiredSafety.org |
| Commenter: | Parry Aftab |
| State: | NJ |
| Agency: | Federal Trade Commission |
| Rule: | Notice Announcing Public Workshop and Requesting Public Comment and Participation |
| Docket ID: | Not yet available |
| Attachment: | OL-100008.pdf Download Adobe Reader |
Comments:
When Information Week ran an article about movie piracy in Fall 2003, I was interviewed as the expert on what kids were doing. I, in turn, asked my experts, my teenangels (Teenangels.org, note that teenangels.com is a porn site.) I had no idea, until then, how prevalent movie piracy was. We all know about the movie pirates selling DVDs on the corner in Chinatown and at flea markets. But few of us know about movie piracy, how it is done and where files of that size can be stored without crashing our systems. I was in that group. I confidently asked a group of my Teenangels during one of their training sessions if they had ever heard of kids downloading movies online. All hands went up. I then asked them if any of them had ever downloaded a motion picture. That’s when I was stunned as several of my elite teens, trained by the FBI, decided to look out the window, under the table and into their laps. They looked everywhere but into my eyes. I sat down in shock. I was truly stunned. It wasn’t the first time, and certainly won’t be the last time that my Teenangels have surprised me. But this was a new abuse issue that had gotten in under MY radar. That doesn’t happen often. But I was blindsided. The teens admitted to downloading the latest Harry Potter movie before it had even hit the movie theaters. And they didn’t have those shadowy, shot by a home video camera in the movie theater versions. They had studio prints, as good as the copy of that same movie we will be able to buy, years later. After making them all swear that they would never ever ever ever do it again, I asked them how they did it. Most downloaded them on P2P networks, as they do music. They burn them to DVDs and store them on the enormous hard drives they all seem to have these days. And more importantly, they got them from their older brothers and sisters, cousins and friends in college. So I went to our TeenAngels alumni, all of whom were now in college and asked them about the problem. They told me that many college kids are downloading and sharing motion pictures online. They have the new releases early enough to avoid having to pay the $10 and more per person to sit in a movie theater. And while many of the movies are shadowy in-theater shoots, many more are studio prints, director’s cuts and review copies. They don’t have to resort to burning expensive DVDs either, since the college servers are so enormous and most college students have access to large unallocated server space. They also briefed me on the extensive efforts being expended by universities to stem piracy of music, movies and software. Acceptable use policies were rewritten warning them of the consequences of illegal downloads and media piracy. They were educated on copyright and other intellectual property issues. They had to sign agreements not to pirate or misuse media as a condition to being given access to the university networks. And some students were expelled when they violated those agreements. All of this was the result of an educational and awareness campaign launched by the MPAA and the RIAA. But, apparently, it wasn’t terribly effective. When forced to choose between rising movie theater ticket prices and stealing a movie for your nearest and dearest 100 dorm-mates, from a college student’s perspective, there isn’t much of a choice. The upcoming lawsuits might make a difference here. My informal polls of teens and college students shows me that many will stop pirating movies if they think they will be sued. The real problem we face is that most don’t think it will happen to them and play the odds. So, we need to find a way to get the message across to them that the MPAA means business. They know what they are doing is illegal (see, “Movies are Different”). But it’s important that they know they could face the consequences of their actions. It’s time to get their attention. But lawsuits alone are not the answer. [see attached for the entire article]