Rupert Murdoch Makes Peace with “Pirate” Google, Starts Selling Movies

Turns out the search giant isn’t so awful, after all. And 20th Century Fox has a lot of digital movies and TV shows it wants to sell, starting with “Prometheus.”
prometheus

The Piracy “Problem”

If every TV show was offered at a fair price to everyone in the world, there would definitely be much less copyright infringement. But because of the monopoly power of the cable companies and content creators, they might actually make less money.

Holmes Wilson, co-director of Fight for the Future

Automobiles, Software, and Us

We cannot draw up a business model that accounts for the wholesale theft of our product. It’s true for pharmacies. It’s true for the automobile industry. It’s true for software developers. And it’s true for us.

— MPAA chair Chris Dodd, speaking at the Atlanta Press Club on Wednesday

Anonymous Fails, Once Again, to Make Its Point

Big as they were, the attacks carried out in revenge for the Megaupload arrests accomplished nothing significant.

The Full Valenti: Dodd Trades His Olive Branch to Tech for a Howitzer, After SOPA/PIPA Gets Delayed

What would Jack do? (And would it work anymore?)

Content is President

Simply put, it doesn’t matter how great a piece of technology you have invented, or how innovative a distribution platform you have created. You must have content.

— Former senator and current MPAA president Chris Dodd, in a speech Tuesday in which he stressed that Hollywood and Silicon Valley are in the content (and content protection) business together

Voices

Tips for Mark Zuckerberg to Sleep Better at Night

Here is the latest comic from our Joy of Tech friends at Geek Culture, Nitrozac and Snaggy. Joy of Tech appears three times a week in the Voices section of this site. (Click on the image to see a bigger version.)

Voices

Online Privacy: Can Tinseltown Teach Silicon Valley the Way?

If there is one topic trending higher in the press than the latest celebrity breakup, it’s the issue of online privacy. The government is now exploring tighter regulation of the online advertising industry. The FTC recently called for a do-not-track system that would allow consumers to opt out of being monitored online. And now the Department of Commerce has taken up the cause with recommendations for a Privacy Bill of Rights.

Hollywood Groups Weigh In on FCC Internet Reclassification

An alphabet soup of entertainment-industry groups submitted filings to the Federal Communications Commission today as part of its request for comment on a framework for broadband services. Specifically, whether or not to reclassify the Internet as a telecommunications service, which would trigger all kinds of juicy regulatory power. There are all kind of complex issues at stake, from net neutrality to piracy to open Internet to broadband access.

Rent. Rip. R.I.P.: RealDVD Takes a Dirt Nap and RealNetworks Ordered to Pay Hollywood $4.5 Million

The Motion Picture Association of America has finally, and permanently, dispatched RealNetworks’s “legal” DVD ripper, RealDVD. On Wednesday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall, who in January dismissed Real’s antitrust claims against Hollywood, really dropped the hammer on the company, issuing a permanent injunction barring it from manufacturing or trafficking in RealDVD.

StealDVD? Well, You Were Asking for It…

The Day After

Sue. Rent. Rip. Return.

TorrentSpy Takes a Dirt Nap

AAPLsauce, Part II

Sundance Bound