back to article Motion Picture Ass. of America to guard online henhouse

The Motion Picture Ass. of America will be given a direct line to kill domain names that it says contain pirated information. Under an agreement signed [PDF] with Radix Registry, the MPAA will be a "trusted notifier" across the whole range of Radix registries that include .website, .tech, .online, .space and .host. If the …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So never bother to build a presence using those domains, because MPAA members can rubber stamp your removal with no safeguards.

    Got it.

    1. Paratrooping Parrot
      FAIL

      Could we have a full list of the domain suffixes owned by these domain registrars? This way everyone can avoid using them. :)

      1. Flat Phillip

        Someone should build that list. Not because I host anything dodgy but because I don't what my email and/or tiny website at the mercy of some idiot lawyer in Hollywood.

        It also sends a very signal to those registrars. Let's face it, it's not like there aren't other choices out there.

      2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Could we have a full list of the domain suffixes owned by these domain registrars?

        Why not just make a list of gTLDs that are worth using?

        com, net, org

        Maybe gov and mil if you're in those domains.

        Done!

  2. Dadmin
    FAIL

    MPAA and RIAA can kiss my analog hole!

    What a fucking huge waste of time and money to protect mostly shitty TV shows and movies that are supposed to be "high art." BULLSHIT! Hollowood puts out TONS and TONS of garbage, and once in a great while a very interesting piece. But mostly, 99% fucking Krapdashian Shits and no giggles.

    I cut my "cord" and now Dish is begging to "Kiss and make up with a $200 gift card?" Fuck off. I got tired of PAYING to receive commercials on programming I already paid for, on packages of crap channels I don't fucking want. WHERE IS MY ALA CARTE channels you fucking crooks?! What a bunch of fucking cheap assholes!

    So, over the past decade, I have encoded all my medias, which are belong to us. I freely share my content with anyone over Sneakernet. Good luck policing THAT, Annoying Assholes! 1.8TB spanning 420+ movies and about 100 classic and new TV Shows that Hulu can't hide from me or take down when the license is not buddy-buddy. Like Aunty Beeb taking League of Gentlemen down before I could finish watching it on Hulu. Fuck, I was WATCHING THAT, Aunty! Oh well, like I said; 1.8TB and counting and not a fucking IP police douche in sight... good luck with that!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: MPAA and RIAA can kiss my analog hole!

      What happened to a la carte channels? Most of them couldn't stand on their own because true membership to them's rather small, plus without the ability to piggyback on popular networks, they wouldn't get enough exposure. The problem basically is that many niche favorites wouldn't be able to survive in an a la carte world because the break-even fee would turn off most viewers. It's the same reason newspapers carry many different sections; otherwise only the sports section is likely to survive.

      1. Wade Burchette

        Re: MPAA and RIAA can kiss my analog hole!

        "Most of them couldn't stand on their own because true membership to them's rather small"

        Good riddance I say. If you cannot stand on your own, then you are not worth it. Why should I subsidize obscure channels? I am also opposed to networks double-dipping. They charge the cable providers (who pass that fee onto me) a fee to receive their channels that packs more than 15 minutes of commercials per hour. You should be able to charge us a fee OR show commercials, but not both. And you should not be allowed to show commercials or promos for another show during a show.

    2. FuzzyWuzzys
      Mushroom

      Re: MPAA and RIAA can kiss my analog hole!

      Irrespective of whether you think Hollywood's output is shite, and I completely agree with you it is shite, it doesn't give you or anyone else the right to redistribute it. It's copyrighted material that creative people have made and therefore they deserve to be paid for their work. Granted most of the money goes right into the pockets of the fat cats who run Hollywood and the hard working people get a pittance but that's life in general.

      So if you made your living writing code at home and selling licenses to companies to use the software, it's not making a fortune but it's enough to be comfortable. Now I tap into your wifi connection, I'm taking copies of each of your projects, putting them up on torrent sites or simply handing them over to anyone who might be able to make use of your software. I'm cutting off money that you make a living from, that's money that's topping up your pension, that's money that means your kids get a new phone for their birthday that year, that's money could mean you could get a nicer car and thus when you go to meet clients, means you stand a better chance of making more sales. Instead I'm giving your hard work away and cutting of some of the money that's yours. As people so rightly say, it's just copies it's not stealing, it doesn't really exist does it? No it doesn't but the consequences to you, your family and others in the industry are very real. You worked your arse off through college to make the grades, get the skills so you could run your own software business, through your own hard work and I'm preventing you from being able to run your business as well as it could be, I'm taking money away from you. You know what, I don't give a shit about how long it took you to code it, I couldn't a rat's arse if your kids starve, I've made a little cash selling your work and got the satisfaction of giving your hard work to someone else, other people can copy your ideas and recode them as theirs too, that's even funnier 'cos they might sell the same software cheaper than yours, now that is funny! You laughing now?

      If you say it's all bullshit, then you're just a typical, greedy bastard who thinks "On Internet = Free stuff". I have no love for the MPAA but as someone who shoots a lot of photography and has to fight to sell images in a crowded marketplace, where people will rip off my images and sell them for their own gain, I fully understand how it feels. When someone takes the results of years of hard won skills and knowledge and just pisses all over it 'cos they've got no morals and no understanding of what it's like to be creative person who expects to be paid.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: MPAA and RIAA can kiss my analog hole!

        ...and I fucking hate photographers ruining my Sunday stroll around nice parks and landmarks. Chimping at every corner and tutting when I walk through the shot...

        Hard won skill is a bit of a stretch as well...depending on what you're photographing.

        If its landscapes then the engineers that designed the features on the camera, the company that produced the lens and mother nature that did most of the work. You just turned up.

        The MPAA are twats and moaning creatives / arty boneheads are twats.

        If you're creating for the betterment of peoples lives or to bring your vision to someone elses attention...more power to you.

        If you're in it for the money, thats fair enough too...but at least be honest about it and go about it the right way.

        Im sick of artists saying they lose money to theft. If you make something...anything...off your work. You're doing well.

        If you take thousands of pictures and make a tenner per picture you're earning a living.

        Trying to restrict all earnings from your photographs is not practical nor reasonable.

        I build PCs / trading software for professional traders. Without my custom built machines they may not make as much money as they do...on the strength of that I dont demand a share of any money they might make using my machines. Nor do I expect a kick back if they sell the machine on further into the future. Once they have bought it, it is theirs.

        I only charge extortionate rates for my support services. They require my time and the expertise I possess. I must be remunerated for that and the rates I charge must be subject to market supply and demand. That is business.

        If I tried to pull the same shit the record / movie biz is trying pull id be dead in the water.

        I earn money from my skills not my products. If you want to make money out of photography, start a photography business...sell your skills. Nobody can pirate those.

        1. nematoad
          Happy

          Re: MPAA and RIAA can kiss my analog hole!

          "Nor do I expect a kick back if they sell the machine on further into the future."

          Given the "First sale doctrine" you wouldn't get one even if you did ask. Both the US and the EU have stated that the legal sale of a good exhausts the original sellers rights to said good. And which you have the good grace to state . What the purchaser does after that is their business and there's nothing anyone can do to stop them.

          Something that the so-called licenses on software try to control but again they are out of luck.

          1. Vic

            Re: MPAA and RIAA can kiss my analog hole!

            Both the US and the EU have stated that the legal sale of a good exhausts the original sellers rights to said good

            And then they changed their minds.

            Levi Strauss sued Tesco for legally buying Levi jeans and then selling them in their shops. Tesco lost the case...

            Vic.

            1. Charles 9

              Re: MPAA and RIAA can kiss my analog hole!

              That was a matter of TRADEMARK protections, which in the EU are more stringent and not subject to exhaustion. Copyrighted materials don't have that protection.

              1. Vic

                Re: MPAA and RIAA can kiss my analog hole!

                That was a matter of TRADEMARK protections, which in the EU are more stringent and not subject to exhaustion

                They were still legitimate product, bought legally and then resold.

                The implication is that trademarked goods never truly become the property of the purchaser. And that's a worry.

                Vic.

                1. Charles 9

                  Re: MPAA and RIAA can kiss my analog hole!

                  Once a consumer buys a pair of the jeans, that's considered exhausted since it's normally kept and used. But since Tesco is a retailer, a "middle man" (which is significant since things like VAT come into play when you're a "middle man"), they're under trade restrictions. In this case, they can't "second source" brand-name products to resell without the say-so of Levi Strauss. That's part of the protection of trademark under EU law and the law has to be changed to alter those protections.

      2. Rol

        Re: MPAA and RIAA can kiss my analog hole!

        The argument for a "free for all" on media is a lot more nuanced than, "they're just greedy bastards, anyway". For me, the essence of pirated material, is that those who would otherwise never get to see it, get a chance to experience what is passing for culture these days.

        Media is a regressive tax, that offers those who can afford the price, a means of keeping their fingers on society's pulse, yet more often, is the beggering price of keeping up.

        For me, pirating is all about giving the next generation access to current culture, without putting their entire family in the poor house.

    3. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: MPAA and RIAA can kiss my analog hole!

      "Oh well, like I said; 1.8TB and counting"

      Is that all? Are you a cheapskate or something? :-)

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Department of Redundancy Department

    .online - You don't say!

    .website - Not to be confused with my gopher site

    .web & .site Meta-redundant!

    They may as well have a literal .generic TLD

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  4. Platypus

    Am I crazy for thinking that "Motion Picture Ass" had nothing to do with saving headline space?

    1. frank ly

      Note the dot. The dot is significant and important.

      1. Efros

        Is it a dot or a hole?

    2. Martin Maloney
      Boffin

      The correct abbreviation for association is assn. not ass.

      Methinks that the use of ass. was a sly editorial comment.

      1. Shades
        Happy

        "Methinks that the use of ass. was a sly editorial comment"

        You must be new here.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The use of ass is due to the fact everyone wants them to "back dat ass up" or indeed someone should "slap that ass down".

      There is also the possibility that they are massive donkeys.

  5. Paul Crawford Silver badge
    Pirate

    Whack-a-mole

    This assumes that any decent pirate is going to use a site under USA control in the first place.

    In fact, I am surprised that the pirate bay has not yet got a distributed web site going, sort of a bit torrent of the site as locally accessible web pages, but with some crypto key to allow updates as needed. No central address/registry to get whacked, no need for backups when it is spread over 10M computers...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Whack-a-mole

      I think the problem is that torrents get updated too often so you can't really do a torrent of torrents. You need a clearinghouse at some point. And if the LEOs REALLY wanted to do something, they'd attack the protocol and find a way to poison the torrent of torrents.

      Plus with the heads of the site under legal scrutiny, I don't think they take much of a hands-on approach like they did before; as a result, the quality of the mirrors has really gone down the tubes. Nowadays the goto place is KAT, probably because they've done their homework and made sure to stay out of reach. Furthermore, they maintain social network links and status sites on different domains just in case (say, a bad ad detection) causes the main domains to be blocked. And now some BT clinets have internal search engines.

  6. hellwig

    Why would the industry support these registrars?

    "It's not hard to imagine how the entire movie industry could get behind the .movie extension if every IP lawyer in Hollywood advocates for it."

    Just because a registrar promises that they'll take down offending domains on request, doesn't mean the industry has any reason to give them actual business.

    Domains aren't like physical buildings. While a landlord may promise to remove the rats and drug dealers to make an apartment building more attractive, TLDs aren't really known for good or bad reputations (except for .ru, .cn, etc...). so just because .movie doesn't have any illegally hosted IP doesn't mean hollywood is suddenly going to buy a bunch of .move domains. I think they're fine with .com.

  7. Pirate Dave Silver badge
    Pirate

    so

    this mostly affects domains most people will never use. No worries then. I hope the MoPiAss. paid a stupidly large sum of money to get the agreement.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: so

      I doubt it. They likely just threatened the registrar to get everything they wanted.

    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: so

      "this mostly affects domains most people will never use."

      That's what we said about .biz and friends at the time. Now, they are in use quite widely because not everyone is tech savvy enough to think "oh, not more new domains, what a scam". All they care about is being able to get mybusinessname.com but it's gone so they get mybusinessname.biz or whatever. This applies especially to small businesses.

      Remember how we used to laugh at the naivety of businesses operating with aol.com or btonline.com email addresses instead of a "proper" domain? Some of those businesses are still there and still using those addresses because, like most of the population, they don't care. It's only a domain name with enough attached to identify them to their customers and they've had it for years now.

  8. Nunyabiznes

    MPAA running the show?

    What could possibly go wrong?

    Well, nothing they'll ever lose in court over. Not that they shouldn't, mind you.

  9. Florida1920
    Black Helicopters

    MPAA intrusion

    Is what happens when you're distracted by fighting off government intrusion.They're coming at us from all sides.

  10. Ropewash

    .movie .music .wtf?

    It was hard enough to recall whether a site was .com .org or .net

    So now you have to type the part of the name you can actually remember into google (good for google I suppose as they'll be tracking) and play Russian roulette clicking on the results until you find the .site you wanted or the compounding of malware infections causes your system to shit it's pants and pass out.

    I'm actually happy in some ways to see this explosion of domains. It's certainly entertaining trying to guess what will get registered next.

    Is .cocacola taken yet? Seems like a future sale opportunity.

    1. fuzzie

      Re: .movie .music .wtf?

      My more cynical side argues that this proliferation of top-level domains is a combination of a) ICANN and the registrars milking companies, many of whom are effectively forced to register under new TLDs to prevent domain squatting or their brands being diluted, and b) search engines, specifically Google, making themselves indispensable for accessing the internet. With all the wordy top-level domains, DNS lookup deteriorated into keyword search bingo.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So for linking to a site that itself links to content (that may or may not be illegal, depending upon where you are) you can get your site shut down with no warning, appeal or recompense? Fuck that entirely. Guess Radix won't be getting any business from me. Their list of TLDs, according to their site are:

    .web (ineligible*)

    .website

    .site

    .home (ineligible*)

    .space

    .online

    .ping

    .press

    .tech

    .music (ineligible*)

    .doctor (ineligible*)

    .hotel (ineligible*)

    .shop (ineligible*)

    .host

    .store

    *No clue what ineligible means in this context. Don't care and can't be arsed to look it up.

    1. BoldMan

      .ping ??? wtf use is that?

      ping ping.ping

      Pinging ping.ping [999.999.999.999] with 32 bytes of data:

      Reply from 999.999.999.999: bytes=32 time=are_you_taking_the_piss TTL=57

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Stupid Ass.

    Whack a mole 2.0

    Let the games begin!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Stupid Ass.

      Whack-a-mole AND beating a dead horse.

  13. Howard Hanek

    Business Philosophy

    I imagine the MPAA has come up with something similar to the Nazi's 'final solution' but are handicapped by the lack of funding to build the camps. If Britain is talking about a ten year sentence for pirating we're not far off are we?

    1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

      Re: Business Philosophy

      To be fair (yeuch, this hurts), when it comes to the ten year sentence for online pirating it's harmonising the online and offline maximum sentence values. As it stands, a repeat/serial offender dealing with physical media can be given ten years maximum, however a repeat/serial offender dealing online can only be given two years maximum.

      While it makes sense to harmonise the maximum sentences, it does rely on the courts applying them sensibly rather than believing the rampant MPAA (US so shouldn't have any direct impact on UK judgments but yeah) and FACT lies about the supposed level of damage and therefore the level of sentencing.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pointless exercise

    Controlling DNS might stop the casual browser for a time but then again as DNS is only a database of IP addresses and associated domain names, there is no real reason to continue using the censored one if you want to want pirated content, you could even swap IP and path via game chat sessions, forums, hidden in web formatting etc and avoid this completely.

    In my opinion it is all just BS for the ignorant who fund the MPAA, it sounds good but only if you do not have a clue about how the internet works.

    If you really want to prevent viewing without payment then the hosts are the target and unfortunately not all of them are in countries willing to kowtow to the corporate US.

    You could cut the countries unwilling to follow MPAA orders off from the web but then you would be just creating a situation where you and anyone stupid enough to follow you loose all control and also sales.

    The only real way to prevent piracy is by allowing everyone to see the content at the same time and that means lowering your prices until everyone can afford it. This ofc will never happen because there are too many players who profit from media monopolies and they would be cut out of the loop.

    1. fuzzie

      Re: Pointless exercise

      You might notice from some of the leaked TPP agreement details that the US is peachy keen to railroad more countries into its intellectual property and patent regimes. For those not part of the TPP, bilaterial trade agreements or strong-arm tactics from the WTO are often used to help unaccommodating countries to "harmonize" their IP/Copyright frameworks, i.e. kowtow to the MPAA/RIAA's demands without the pesky intervention of sovereignty.

  15. zen1

    Wait... Did they actually call the MPAA trusted'? That is the funniest f-ing thing I've ever read in my 51 years...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Trust has a particular meaning in this context.

      It's the same trusted as "trusted computing", where only Microsoft has a signed root key.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Fox has 44 MILLION false takedowns on Youtube alone....

    Given that fox has over 44 MILLION incorrect takedowns filed just to Youtube alone using ContentID (takedowns that were overturned - with millions more uncontested as they were uploaded by individuals without legal expertise), Radix is going to basically KILL it's own domain business stonedead.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fox has 44 MILLION false takedowns on Youtube alone....

      And I will dance on its grave.

  17. Flat Phillip

    Safeguards

    It will be all ok because of those safeguards, you know the ones that:

    * Try to take down sites using 127.0.0.1

    * Remove Debian CDs because they were CDRs

    * Tried to nail someone because they were using bittorrent to get valgrind

    It seems the rush to find the pirates there may be a somewhat liberal interpretation of what a safeguard is. The hint is, its not "some crap we made up so you all ok about us which we will ignore".

    Still it's nothing new; I'm sure there were such things happening in the high seas in Ye Olde Days where some ships that was unknown and/or suspect got taken out.

  18. Anonymous C0ward

    Does anyone own .bay?

    That could get interesting.

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