A few people are carrying this story, but I couldn’t resist commenting. The Recording Industry vs The People reports that their latest attempts to scare young children and browbeat the elderly has run aground, big time. For a few years the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has been running this scam where it sends people a letter saying they’ve infringed a copyright of some Rap Artist, and if they don’t want to go to jail they better stump up a wad of cash. Many do, even those that complain they don’t have Internet access or are deaf through old age. Well, it’s taken a while but it looks like the Judiciary has finally cottoned on to the RIAA and their alternative thinking on the whole crime and punishment deal. Judge Rudi Brewster put the brakes on the Interscope v. Rodriguez case by asking them to actually back up their claims with evidence, which wasn’t what the RIAA thought it needed. That’s a shock for them, having to prove the assertions they’ve made. Doing so could make bringing all the cases they want uneconomic, and the thousands of similar actions they’ve planned are now effectively on hold. That also assumes that there is evidence, and it’s not some horrible mistake, which when the RIAA has been tested in court previously seems often the case.
I wish the people in the Recording Industry would wake up, realise the negative PR the RIAA is generating for them and shut them down. But then if they go on like this they’ll dig themselves a legal hole they’ve never get out of anyway!

For the first time in history US box office takings for this summer have exceeded $4bn (£1.98bn). Yet, with more people going to the movies, and spending more money doing so what is Hollywood yacking about? Piracy! Please…give it a rest guys. Yes your movies are pirated, they’ve been pirated since people first made movies. When I went to film school I met plenty of people who had a small collection of their favourite films as 16mm (and even 35mm) prints. Ok, so with the VCR and now digital distribution systems it’s easier and possibly more prolific, but the interest in films is greater and they make money from more than just the Cinema release.
If the film industry had it’s way the VCR would have been banned and they’d be billions out of pocket. As a teenager I remember when Doctor No. was first shown on TV, more than 10 years after it was on the cinema, maybe closer to 15, is that how they’d like things to be? No, they’re too hooked into the money they get from sales DVD and TV rights now to put the clock back.
If you give people a reason to go to the cinema rather than whining about Piracy they’ll go, irrespective of if it’s free to download. There are at least three really good films to see this summer, Bourne Ultimatum being the best, and the number of people who’ve been to see it in the US, and here in the UK, support the view that a quality product is supported by a viewing audience, irrespective.
Perhaps if those idiots wearing the night vision goggles looking for someone with a bionic eye threw out the moron who made mobile phone calls through the last 20 minutes of the Matrix, or those two 10 year old girls who giggled at nothing throughout Return of the King, I’d be more impressed. With HD quality movies now available legally the cinema is going to show a natural decline unless it’s starts to offer a better experience overall, or is that already loaded as another thing to blame on Piracy?
Frankly I think the statistics and outrage that comes out of the film industry in respect of Piracy is as unbelievable as some of their plots, and even less enjoyable.

Like an idiot I signed up for the BBC iPlayer Beta, and today they sent me an email inviting me to take part. So far I can’t say I’m overly impressed. Given the build up that the BBC has given this service, the reality appears to be a complete mess. First when you try to use it you find that the BBC is joined, Dubya style, to the hip with Microsoft. And as a result insists that your using Windows XP, Media Player and Internet explorer. I have all those things but I still got a red cross because I had the audacity to use Firefox to go the the iPlayer website. Then after putting my iPlayer account and password in at least four different time I was told that they where ‘experiencing  technical difficulties’, before I eventually got the download install files. After I’d done that I was asked for my name and password again, except these weren’t the first ones but some new BBC account ones, so I had to register again. After that exercise I select a show, one of the BBC’s output in the last 7 days, and watched while it downloaded at a snails pace. 10 minutes later it’s done 22mb of 350Mb  total, by the time this arrives the presenters might have retired or died.
If they can’t allow more than 7 days to watch something, or do it in a manner that doesn’t require the patience of Job to get working, I can’t see there is much future in this. It needs to be much slicker, faster and less reliant on being a fan of Microsoft. But then you’d think they’d know that.

I mentioned the other day that in the past week a whole slew of TV show pilots and new season episodes had surfaced on the BitTorrent P2P system. Now even more have appeared, including the Pilots for The Bionic Woman, Damages, ‘Chuck’, and Aliens in America. I might have missed some, but that pretty much covers the new drama TV for the American fall season. All in the space of a single week.

Have they given all the TV stations DVD copies? Or is this guerilla marketing? Whatever the answer, it’s clearly not an isolated exercise.

As I’ve been writing about TV shows on here, and Den of Geek. In general I’ve been talking about those that are actually on TV, and people are watching. But at Den we’ve been inundated with reviews of TV shows that aren’t actually on the TV, and have been leaked onto the Internet.

In the last weeks we’ve seen these appear online, all of which are months away from their official first screenings.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles PILOT
Pushing Daisies PILOT
Californication PILOT
Weeds S03E01, S03E02.
Dexter S02E01, .S02E02
Brotherhood.S02E01, S02E02

If this had been one or two odd episodes leaked by someone in the production I’d understand. But the numbers of shows that this is happening with does make me think something else is going on here. While I can’t imagine any of these production companies would admit leaking their work, I suspect that some of these releases are marketing led exercises, aimed at hyping the show ahead of it’s run. If I’m wrong then almost every major US TV show seems to have it’s own resident pirate, ready to get their shows out to the downloading public as soon as they can!
Anyone out there got any first hand experience of what’s actually happening here?

This is insane…this morning I reported on the mysterious appearance of Dexter Season 2 first episode around the Internet.

And now…Episode 2 has appeared…OMG!

Someone at Showtime, or in the production, has clearly gone barking mad…

I’m not sure what to think about this. But some ‘crazy’ person inside Showtime has released a copy of the new Dexter season 2 opener episode, the whole thing, onto the internet. The official start point is months away, September, so this is either a very pre-emptive promotional strike or someone in that organisation is going to get a kicking.

Has anyone seen it yet? Is it any good?

I loved the first Season.

UPDATE: Some Dexter season 2 details here!!!

The Recording Industry Association of America hasn’t made many friends in the past few years, sending threatening letters demanding money to people under the assertion that they’d downloaded music illegally. While this activity is clearly going on, the tactics of dragging people of all ages to court on the flimsiest of evidence hasn’t strengthened their moral position, and now it’s actually cost them cash!

The case of Capitol vs., Foster could be a turning point, because it demonstrates that using the legal system in the manner that the RIAA has been doing can have unfortunate circumstances.

Presiding Judge, Lee R. West has been damning of the RIAA’s methodology in bring the action against Miss Deborah Foster in the first place, then attempting to shift the case onto her daughter, before attempting to ditch the case when it realised the Judge actually expected to be given evidence.

As such he refused to accept the case had ended when the RIAA withdrew, and allowed Miss Foster’s counterclaim to continue to it’s ultimate conclusion.

What’s crucial about this case is two presidents it’s now created. The first is that you can’t bring an action against one person and then relate that to another once in court, Miss Foster isn’t responsible for the actions of her daughter in this respect. But even more important is the idea that more than circumstantial evidence is required to prove a connection between the computer and the act, and IP numbers aren’t actually a substantially basis to bring a case like this. This brings all the other cases currently in the system into huge question. If this wasn’t bad enough for the RIAA, another case which went source on them in Florida has put racketeering and extortion on the table, which are federal crimes carrying prison time. The defendant there is also claiming control over the copyrighted material she allegedly downloaded as recompense for their actions in bringing the case, which will thrill Atlantic Records, the RIAA surrogate in that litigation.

The full Capitol v. Foster order is detailed here