It comes from this (Richard Esguerra, EFF) article on what is basically a wishlist for the US government drawn up by the MPAA and RIAA regarding protection of copyrights. I come to basically the same conclusions just by reading the material from the MPAA and RIAA. Follow the jump to read more.
The first thing quoted the article deals with media companies installing anti-infringement software on people's computers.
Have media companies not learned anything from the Sony-BMG rootkit debacle? It seems not.
(For those who are unaware, Sony-BMG installed rootkits (related to viruses) without users' permission on their computers when playing music on the computer to detect whether the music has been pirated or not. A huge backlash followed by a lawsuit occurred, as Sony-BMG had completely breached users' trust, and the music wouldn't play because antivirus software quarantined that rootkit that was the only thing that would allow the music to run. If there was no protection at all, other, much more malicious, rootkits could follow the path that this rootkit took to install itself and break users' computers. Following this disaster, Sony-BMG removed this rootkit from their digital music. That said, it looks like the RIAA thinks this [removal of the rootkit] was a bad idea. Wow.)
The second quote deals with copyright filtering. As I am not by any means an expert on this, my response to this will be short: no amount of filtering will ever completely eradicate piracy, as people will invariably and inevitably find new ways to circumvent this.
The third quote asks that border patrol and airport personnel search people for pirated material and tell them about the evils of piracy. For one thing, at airports it is already criminal to bring in pirated movies and music from other countries. For another, is that really necessary? In my experience, pirated movies are of much lower quality than the unpirated copies anyway, and a plethora of recent studies have shown that box office sales are making up the vast majority of movie sales, piracy or no piracy. This just shows an amazing mix-up of priorities for the MPAA and RIAA.
The fourth quote talks about essentially blacklisting countries that have countries that don't fully support this draconian copyright regime. I have written about this before, so please read it at your leisure.
The fifth quote basically shows that the requests are for a Big Brother-style enforcement of copyrights, with law enforcement officials raiding houses for even single copies of pirated movies and music. It really goes to show that both law enforcements' and entertainment lobbies' priorities are seriously out of wack.
Apparently, making record profits isn't enough. People must bow and submit their liberties to these industries, with the threat of thugs and goons coming after them if they don't comply. That's not entertainment - that's fear.
