Would You Let The MPAA Scan Your Hard Drive?
from the for-the-good-of-the-industry,-of-course... dept
Broadband Reports notes that, not only did the MPAA file more pointless lawsuits against people for file sharing, but they’ve released a new piece of software to scan your hard drive for you and let you know if there are any infringing files on it. While the article claims this is new, it sounds just like the software they announced when they filed their first round of lawsuits. Of course, many people might wonder why they would want the MPAA scanning their hard drives — when it’s not clear what the software is actually doing, if it includes any kind of spyware, or if it reports its findings back to anyone. The software, obviously, is targeted at parents trying to figure out if their kids are doing anything with file sharing, but the initial tests from users on Broadband Reports suggests that software barely works at all. It tends to identify almost all audio and visual files as potentially infringing. Apparently, the MPAA believes in the scorched earth approach to stopping file sharing. If you have an audio or video file on your computer, it’s most likely infringing, so why not delete it?
Comments on “Would You Let The MPAA Scan Your Hard Drive?”
Why Knot
Well, if they’d like to make it worth my while in some form or fashion. Sure I’d scan if they’ll pay me for it and any files which I deleted on their advice which weren’t actually infringing.
So let’s say the scan take’s 30 minutes, last worth about 10 dollars .. and they identify 30 songs incorrectly that I delete .. say 5 dollars per song (delete and restore) so they’d wind up owing me .. about 160.00 ..
And if it identify say 10 to 15 infringing songs … they’d save how much ? Assuming I’d want to purchase the actual infringing material.
Wonder if they’d be so ‘helpful’ under these kinds of guidelines ?
Re: Why Knot
The evidence is currently that they don’t even know what a `file’ is when it comes to processing search-engine results for “files” on a website – go on, tell me how many “files” I’m “illegally hosting” at the above URL, I dare ya!
So I’m hardly surprised that the local hard-drive version would be a crock of crap.
How much did they bribe a programmer to betray the community, anyway?
No Subject Given
Isn’t it amazing that started out as a man with a a dancing monkey, a guitar and a tin cup has turned into the most wealthy elite class in America? What a wonderfully group of people we have created in these muscians and actors. They are so smart and generous.
I’m glad they can live like that and afford to feed all of those wonderful starving lawyers. You know entertaining people who are depressed because their jobs have gone to China is SUCH IMPORTANT WORK! What we do without them?
We need to close all public librarys. These terrible places are diseminating copyrighted print materials for free. Also, I think we need to start sentencing these media pirates the death penality.