MPAA's Lies About Films Being Available Online Easily Debunked In Seconds

from the why-do-they-even-bother? dept

We need to bust the myth that legal content is unavailable. Creative industries are tirelessly experimenting with new business models that deliver films, books, music, TV programs, newspapers, games and other creative works to consumers. In Europe, there are over 3,000 on-demand audio-visual services available to European citizens. According to a recent KPMG report, 86% of the most popular and highest quality films and television series are available across legal digital platforms to UK consumers.



Click through for TorrentFreak's clickable chart

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Stan McCoy was, until recently, the lead negotiator on "intellectual property" for the US Trade Representative -- making him the main guy behind ACTA and the horrific intellectual property sections of the TPP and TTIP agreements. Then, last year, he jumped ship exactly where you'd expect him to go: becoming a lobbyist for the MPAA . McCoy, as we've noted, has a history of condescension and mocking towards anyone expressing concern for "the public," rather than "the industry" which pays his bills.So, it should come as little surprise at all that, in his current role, he's out there trotting out more bogus claims that ignore reality, in order to push the agenda of his employer. In a blog post discussing his appearance on a panel in the UK, McCoy insists that he's busting the myth that there's piracy because the content isn't available from authorized sources:Okay, so this is McCoy's attempt at mythbusting. And it fails, pretty miserably, as TorrentFreak's Ernesto showed with just a little bit of effort. He went and looked at the top 10 most downloaded films last week and busted McCoy's weak attempt at mythbusting And, of course the KPMG study that McCoy relies on is quite misleading as well , since it actually found that over 80% of the top movies are not available on Netflix, by far the most popular service. That means that if peoplewanted to see the movies they want, they face a fragmented, confusing market, in which they'd need to sign up for a bunch of different services with different limitations to actually see what they want.In other words, despite the MPAA pretending otherwise again and again, it remains a simple fact that the lack of availabilityon authorized services has a difficult time competing with the availability and convenience of unauthorized offerings. The same thing has been true for well over a decade. The music industry has mostly figured this out, so why can't the movie industry?Of course, what McCoy can't really say is the truth: the movie industry can't readily adapt because it will piss off the theaters. The recording industry couldn't more fully embrace the internet until the old record stores finally lost their power, and the studios are held back by the theaters nowadays. Of course, the MPAAand probablybe trying to help transition to the future by pushing back against the theaters' outdated views and explaining to them howcan also easily compete with home viewing by providing a better in-theater experience. But that takes real work. Instead, the MPAA's focusing on "content protection" because that way it retains a reason to exist

Filed Under: availability, copyright, innovation, movies, piracy, releases, stan mccoy, windowing

Companies: mpaa