Warner Brothers Pirates Anti-Piracy Software
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Did Warner Bros. pirate antipiracy technology?
Fri May 21, 2010 @ 01:52PM PST
By Eriq Gardner
Warner Bros. has been sued for stealing an antipiracy technology patent.
The claim comes from a German company called Medien Patent Verwaltung. According to new infringement lawsuits filed against Warners, Technicolor and Deluxe in New York and Germany, MPV says that in 2003, it introduced the studio to a method of marking films with a distinctive code so it could track back sources of piracy to the exact theater in which an unauthorized copy originated. MPV says it has been trying to get Warners to pay for use of the technology since it allegedly began incorporating the invention in prints throughout Europe in 2004.
“We disclosed our anti-piracy technology to Warner Bros. in 2003 at their request, under strict confidentiality, expecting to be treated fairly," MPV says in a statement. "Instead, they started using our technology extensively without our permission and without any accounting to us. However, we had taken care to obtain patents to protect MPV's technology, and we are now in a position where we must assert our rights.”
Oh, sweet irony. I have some opinions on the state of copyright laws in America and this news article has made my day. WB sued people over making a handful of free copies of Mystic River and The Last Samurai. They once convinced the FBI to raid a man's home because he made a small number of copies of DVDs for private use. They hire student interns to gather personal information about pirates on the internet. To put it lightly: they are extremely anti-piracy. Also, they seem to be pirates. I hope they get raped in court.
The MPAA has admitted in the past to making illegal copies of advance DVDs given to them. These organizations and companies that crack down on pirates and try to ruin American copyright law are at best fair-weather supporters of copyrights. The moment it becomes inconvenient for them to follow copyright law, they stop following it.
Fuck 'em. Don't buy their products. Don't follow copyright laws that are clearly anti-consumer (DMCA). I'll give them my money when they stop fucking my nation's laws up with their lobbyists and stop being hypocrites.
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."
British General Charles Napier while in India
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Those exact words came to mind when I saw the topic title...
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Ditto.
That's a pretty old game. Didn't they recently make a movie about Ford scamming the intermittent windshield wiper?
If anyone is still wondering who has the upper hand between corporations and citizens, I don't know how many more examples it would take.
Are you still a Libertarian, Jormungander? (Corporations being a socialist institution, that is.)
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Well, in my opinion "piracy" only means that someone believes they should be paid. I wish that people could talk more about the damage that copyright law does to society, because it is significant.
By some estimates more than 90% of the content in the catalog of the library of congress, which contains not only books and periodicals but also films, music, photographs, and other media is protected by copyright, yet not commercially available. This is tantamount to a ban or interdiction on this material because it cannot be sold (because it's not commercially viable) and it cannot be given away. Since copyright extends in most cases beyond 150 years almost all published material in the twentieth century is illegal to possess unless you go to the library of congress or some other archive and someone else hasn't taken it or destroyed it and you don't need special permission to view it.
I know many would argue that people have a perfectly legitimate right to make money from the exclusive sale of their own creative work, and I would agree but I think there are limits beyond which it becomes unacceptable. One does not have a right to make money in that way, in a sense stealing the published material from the public domain until all that is left is what you would have to pay them for.
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft