MPAA: Censorship Good For Consumers, Will Help Innovation

MPAA: Censorship Good For Consumers, Will Help Innovation

OK, I believe it is now the appropriate time to acknowledge that the entire media industry represented by the MPAA, and all the other industry 'associations' struggling to ensure our acquiescence to their concept of perpetual third-party ownership of creative content, have reached the point of 'grasping at straws.'

The MPAA posts in a controversial blog gloating about recent court successes against The Pirate Bay, saying that censorship is good for consumers and encourage innovation

I am unable to comprehend the logic behind the contention that 'censorship' has a positive value for a) "consumers"; and b) "innovation."

I expect the consumer angle will be bolstered by the threat of higher prices... a threat which they have used against cassette tapes, video tapes, and now digital media.

But the "innovation" angle completely eludes me...

Anyone care to defend the case? because I can't get my head around how censorship (the 'silencing' of a communicator) makes for more and better "innovation" within the industry....

reply to post by Maxmars


It's coming faster than any of us can imagine.

Everyday the organizations that oversee communications of all kinds tighten the hold a little more.

War is Peace,
Freedom is Slavery,
Ignorance is Strength.

There is no way that censorship is conducive of innovation. That is one of the most ridiculous statements I have heard in a long time.

Sounds like corporate double speak, like "military intelligence" or "fighting a war for peace". Nothing good will come from it. If anything, it will bite them on the butt. (I so want to see that.) Of course, I want to see things open sourced, but that may take a bit of time.

Propaganda at its worse.

reply to post by Maxmars


Censorship encourages monopolization, centralizes distribution and supports industry controlled branding as well as media manipulation/propaganda. If I like an artist on the internet, I would rather pay them $10 and know that it goes to them, not $1 to them and $15 to the record label.

This is just more propaganda from a bunch of shills that are afraid for their unethical production of income.

Cheers - Dave

$17 popcorn is good for consumers too.

it certainly helped with my innovation.

such as smuggling massive amounts of contraband past a pimple-faced 17 yr old guarding the gate without being detected.

reply to post by randomname


I love sitting down in the movie theaters and watching everyone pull stuff out of bags, purses and pockets. Even saw a guy who hid a bag of M&Ms under his hat...

Buying anything at the theater is akin to highway robbery.

reply to post by Maxmars

I wonder if they mean encryption till you're blue in the face kind of innovation?

CD's were for a long time only able to be made by large companies in the beginning. When the very people who invented it all decided to release "burners" onto the market, we had the same old arguments as with the recordable audio cassette and then later, the video recorder. All the while screaming "Devil!", they still managed to increase profits year after year. Anyway, back to digital...

They tried (I believe) certain proprietary methods to protect the CD content but even that didn't work for long. With the advent of DVD, they built the encryption into the disc. A bored student (from Finland if memory serves) set about working out how it all worked and after a while discovered that the key was some huge prime number or something like that. Maths is not my strong point and my brain tends to automatically fuzz over the incomprehensible stuff (to me).

With Bluray they upped it even more. All the components involved in displaying the contents of the disc need to be "compliant" (hardware chips?) thereby proving you are only playing it on authorised and legal equipment of their choosing and, again if memory serves, they somehow maintain a right to revoke your viewing privileges by retro-actively removing a piece of data on one of their servers.

I don't have bluray so don't have hands on experience with discs on a PC but I did read that someone, somewhere, somehow, managed to find "the key" by luck with a debugger (no, it's not rude!) under Windows and they "went from there" so to speak. Whatever they can make, some clever nerd can break...eventually. At least, that's how it's gone so far and I have seen plenty of bluray rips on the net. They are way too big for me to download though and besides, my old PC couldn't play them without stuttering anyway.

reply to post by Maxmars


So from what i read from this article it seems to me that MPAA not only supports Censorship but then that means they also support a dictatorship style government?

Since when is Censorship is Good For Consumers? honestly i dont see how banning or censoring sites will help Innovation.

Censorship is helpful and promotes innovation, so shut up.

With Chris Dodd running things and his questionable background, I think that they got the right guy, to pull off the wrong things.

Peace, NRE.

Ah, how so many times in history phrases like these have been uttered. Yet frankly, I cannot recall a single scenario where censorship did best for the people. Suppression is impossible to maintain, and we will have a voice.

It is to be.