RIAA/MPAA adopt new stealth tactic

Evil wrapped in Miami Vice

By Charlie Demerjian: Saturday 29 July 2006, 19:24
I HAD THE misfortune of seeing the new Miami Vice movie Thursday night, but the experience wasn't all wasted, I stumbled upon the newest stealth rights removal reeducation campaign from the people that brought you DRM. Yes, the MPAA, RIAA or BSA, I am not sure which are behind this new tact, stealth infection of modern culture.

First the movie. It was far from good, but at no time did I actively contemplate biting my tongue off and using suicide as an escape. It was a free, and almost worth the price. If you think back, most movies have a few memorable scenes, humorous, effects-ridden or just interesting. Miami Vice did not. In fact, it was focused grouped to death, non-offensive in any way, but also studiously avoided doing anything interesting.

To use the Disco Steve method of rating movies, a scale from 1 to infinity of how many miles he would walk to avoid the movie, I would give this an 8. It was a B grade drug movie with only the most tenuous ties to the original TV show. Will Ferrell was about as suave and cool as the guy running around a NASCAR infield, drunk out of his mind, rebel flag in hand, skidmarked underwear showing.

The movie did have one thing that was extremely interesting though, the next campaign from the DRM infection folk. They are now starting to equate piracy, or their version of it, with all the things that are bad in the world. Remember the 'piracy funds terrorists' laugher a few months ago? They learned, and are doing it through the back door now, the front door got them nowhere.

Now, they are slipping the message in through 'blowoff' lines, trying to infect modern culture. There was a scene in Miami Vice where they were discussing the big bad drug dealers, and how international they were. The good guys listed all the thing the bad guys were capable of bringing into the US, Cocaine, Heroin, etc etc. They listed it as coke from Coumbia, heroin from Afganistan, X from Y and A from B. Pretty normal stuff. At the end, they added 'pirated software from China'. Blink.

Now, had they listed anything other than drugs and software, it might not have been so blatant. If they had listed pirated software any other time in the movie, I might not have noticed, but this one was pretty obviously a plant. Don't go see the movie, it isn't worth it, but if you do, pay attention for this bit, you will see exactly how much it stands out. The movie makers could not afford people to do decent dialog, and it seems the DRM infectors could not either.

Make no mistake about it, this is the first, or at least an early attempt to infect popular culture with the themes the content mafia wants you to believe are reality. They have lost the online war, and are starting to lose in the courts. The overt attempts at bending conversations have failed, mainly because they are wrong, so now they are trying the back door.

As I said, this is the first time I have seen it myself, but it has probably been around for a bit. Have you seen it? Can you send me other times that it happened, or is there a web site that cataloguess it? If so, send the links this way so I can publicize it, or if you are bored, start a site yourself. Keep an eye open for more of this evil folks, we can't let the bad guys win. µ

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Lol!
I always laugh at their feeble attempts to infect pop culture with this sort of crap.
Unfortunately, it's only a small portion of the population which isn't feeble minded.

I hate to hijack...

Did anyone else notice strange red dots on the screen for like the first 20 minutes of the movie? They appeared like the "cigarette burns" when the projector switches reels, but they were all over the screen. My guess, it is the way the MPAA is trying to identify where movies are getting video-taped from.

The dots look like they were in patterns similar to brail. I kept thinking there were laser sights all over (for one frame every so often).

Anyone know anything about that? Oh, I went opening day.

Yup. That's one of the new watermark inventions they use.

Each film shows a nearly invisible code (serial number, dots, you name it) which identifies the location of the movie theatre where that movie was shown. If the MPAA/RIAA/Feds/Nazi's/Hezbollah/whatever torrent/p2p a ripped movie, they only had to check back that serial code to find out which movie theatre it was recorded from.

Then they will place some cops in the theatre to check out the crowds and if someone is recording the movie, they're busted. The FBI already had their first successes this way.

Unfortunately for the MPAA most pirated movies come from Russia, where the FBI have no real jurisdiction and nobody can be bothered to give a rats ass about piracy.