MPAA Reboots Movie Piracy With Takedown Request
The MPAA (or Motion Picture Association of America) has once again proven what a complete waste of time it is when it comes to fighting movie piracy.
In a misguided effort to get the subreddit FullLengthFilms removed from Google search results, the MPAA single-handedly caused a traffic surge of 300,000 daily clicks to the ailing forum, reports ars technica.
Just how big of a surge was this compared to what the subreddit was used to? Forum creator jaredcheeda commented:
I forgot I even made this place. Just updated the sidebar to get rid of my “This subreddit is in beta and the stylesheet is still being worked on”. And of course changed it to stop saying ‘prefer’ and instead to say ‘only’. Yeah, that looked bad. This place is a s*** hole of spam links. If anyone wants to be added as a moderator to clean it up, let me know. So far, no one from Reddit.com or TorrentFreak has contacted me regarding this. I wasn’t even aware until a user on here linked me to the article. For those wanting to submit good, legal content, please do.
In other words, traffic had grown so poor that the spammers had taken over. Now, thanks to the crusade against theft of intellectual property, it lives again.
In the past, organizations like the MPAA have stooped so low in the fight against movie piracy that they’ve petitioned the government for permission to use spambots, malware, and even ransomware to lock down computers they merely “suspect” of breaking the law.
Such an action would be a gross intrusion of privacy with little to no evidence of any wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, companies like HBO and Netflix actually “get” how to fight movie piracy: offer better choices.
In 2013, for instance, HBO pretty much shrugged off questions on their Game of Thrones TV series being the most pirated piece of content they’ve ever experienced. Executives claimed that the illegal behaviors did nothing to hurt DVD/Blu-ray sales, and may have even helped.
Furthermore, Ted Sarandos of Netflix noted that with the availability of his streaming service in new markets, BitTorrent use actually went down — his message, “with better choices, piracy is no longer an issue.”
What do you think of this latest power move by the MPAA, readers? Are they best served continuing to go after these small forums, or would they be better off encouraging lower prices and seeing to it that Hollywood is making better movies? Share your thoughts in our comments section.
