"Greed and the Hollywood Dogs of War"

Movie piracy prevention news:

The Motion Picture Association of America on Thursday unveiled its latest tool in the war on movie piracy: a pair of DVD-sniffing Labrador Retrievers, Lucky and Flo.

The MPAA, which represents the major U.S. movie studios in government and legal affairs, claims the illegal copying of movies and television shows on DVDs and other media cost them more than $6.1 billion in lost revenues in 2005.

The job for Lucky and Flo will be to sniff out optical discs in luggage or other containers, and stop the discs from getting to manufacturing plants where they can be reproduced.

Ok, now this I find utterly rediculous... and greedy. Dogs? Sniffing out "pirated" DVDs? Does this mean that pirated DVDs smell different than legally purchased DVDs? And $6.1 billion in lost revenues? Not likely. These "revenues" don't exist and weren't theirs to be lost in the first place.

Yes, I completely agree, music and movie piracy is wrong, but maybe if the Hollywood studios made legally purchased DVDs more affordable, then there would be less piracy. To me that just seems like a far more efficient way of combating the problem than sending two DVD-sniffing dogs out on a world tour. But, of course, greed is pervasive, and piracy -- according to the MPAA -- is entirely the consumer's fault, and has nothing to do with the studios.

Makes you think doesn't it.

-Jon
posted by Jon at 8:22 PM  I   I  0 comments