MOTION PICTURE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA

The 'Motion Picture Association of America' ('MPAA'), originally called the 'Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of America', is a non-profit trade association based in the United States which was formed to advance the interests of movie studios. Its members consist of the "big six" major Hollywood studios: Buena Vista Pictures Distribution (The Walt Disney Company), Sony Pictures, Paramount Pictures (Viacom—which bought DreamWorks in February 2006), 20th Century Fox (News Corporation), Universal Studios (NBC Universal), and Warner Bros. (Time Warner). The organization produces the well-known voluntary film rating system.

Contents

Political activities

Leadership

Controversies

Rating system

Fake torrents

Copyright issues

Allegation of copyright infringement by the MPAA

Monopoly

MiiVi.com

See also

References

External links

Political activities

Besides assigning its aforementioned film ratings, the MPAA lobbies on behalf of its members on a variety of issues including copyright and free speech. It promotes digital rights management technologies. The MPAA, along with its equivalent in the recording industry, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), has taken strong steps to reduce the number of file-sharing sites online where copyrighted films are available for download. In April and May 2005, signs appeared on the homepages of LokiTorrent and EliteTorrents (two large BitTorrent trackers), stating that they had been closed down because of encouraging the illegal distribution of copyrighted material defined as the distribution of copyrighted works without permission of the copyright holder.

Leadership

In 1922, the movie studio bosses hired Will H. Hays to be the first president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of America. A former U.S. Postmaster General and election campaign manager for U.S. President Warren G. Harding, Hays was responsible for the creation of the Production Code in 1930. Enforcement of the Code was lax until the major studios agreed—under threat of religious groups to push for stronger state and federal censorship—that all films released on or after July 1 1934 would adhere to the Code or face a fine.
In 1934, Joseph I. Breen (1888–1965) took over as head of the Production Code Administration (PCA) and served until retiring in 1945 when Eric Johnston took over and the name was changed to the Motion Picture Association of America. In November 1947, Johnston was part of a closed-door meeting with forty-seven motion picture executives at New York City's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. As a result, on November 25 1947, Johnston issued the Waldorf Statement, a two-page press release that marked the beginning of the Hollywood blacklist. Johnston remained in office as head of the MPAA until his death in 1963. Ralph Hetzel acted as interim head until 1966.
From 1966 to 2004, Jack Valenti served as the president of the group, becoming nearly synonymous with the organization thanks to his long service and high profile. On September 1 2004, he retired, and was succeeded by Dan Glickman, a former Agriculture Secretary during the Clinton Administration.
Kori Bernards is the MPAA's vice president of corporate communications and the lead spokesperson in the current battle with the BitTorrent technology invented by Bram Cohen.

Controversies

Rating system

Main articles: Motion Picture Association of America film rating system

Some of the MPAA's actions have been controversial. One example is the film rating system. Many believe that the intent of the various ratings has been subverted. For example, there is widespread access to R-rated movies even for those under 17, while the NC-17 rating spells commercial death for a film^[1][2], undermining its purpose.
Film critic Roger Ebert has called for an entirely new system of ratings designed to address these issues. Some people criticize film-makers for editing their works to conform to the various ratings. For example, they might excise some extreme violence or sex to avoid an NC-17, or even "spice up" a children's movie so as to move from G to PG and appeal to older children. The ratings system itself is attacked as ''de facto'' censorship by free-speech activists, and conversely as too lenient in its content standards by some conservative critics, religious leaders, lawyers, and parental review sites. A criticism that has come from both sides is that the MPAA tends to be considered more complacent with violent content than sexual one. Other criticisms have included that there is more bias against homosexual sexual content than heterosexual. Also, movies with male genitalia tend to get a "harsher" rating than those with female genitalia.

Fake torrents

The MPAA has put up fake torrents on the internet to attract the attention of copyright infringers, a practice that has led some torrent sites to automatically ban anything uploaded by the MPAA.^[3][4]

Copyright issues

Other critics attack the MPAA for its action on copyright issues. They claim that it inhibits legitimate uses of its products through laws such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and that it is too draconian in pursuing copyright infringers. The MPAA replies that it is attempting only to limit the reduction in profits caused by file sharing and other types of copyright infringement although many valid arguments exist to make its moves highly controversial. In 2006, the MPAA's moral authority on this subject was questioned. Filmmaker Kirby Dick's documentary ''This Film Is Not Yet Rated'', itself an attack on the ratings system, was submitted for rating consideration. The organization then made unauthorized copies of it for certain employees of the MPAA itself.^[5]
The MPAA was responsible for a police raid on the servers that hosted a Torrent Tracking website called ''The Pirate Bay'' on May 31 2006 by pressuring the Swedish government (where the servers were located) to take action. The Pirate Bay, in response, claimed that they had no basis for the seizure, and were back up and running on backups two days later. The MPAA issued a press release shortly after this raid in which they stated that they lost 6.1 billion dollars nation wide to piracy in 2005, and that internet piracy alone had cost the studios 2.3 billion. ^[6] However, contrary to MPAA statements, several studies and commentators have concluded that one download hardly equals a lost sale.^[7][8][9] This is especially true considering that a good portion ($1.4 billion) of the $6.1 billion figure represents what could be viewed as simply making a non-commercial backup, either virtually on a device or physically on another disc, which is protected under United States law. These numbers are further suspicious due to the private nature of the study, which cannot be publicly checked for methodology or validity.^[10][11][12]
Though the MPAA has won several victories against online piracy such as the Razorback2 raid and a series of successful lawsuits against public torrent websites, piracy is still growing steadily with modern studies showing more and more participants.
The effect MPAA raids have had on overall online pirating traffic is, to date, limited—the day Razorback2 (a major server on the Edonkey2000 network) was shut down, Edonkey2000 network traffic stayed the same, showing negligible change.^[13][14][15] However the MPAA has had a very successful history shutting down networks of pirated material and torrent sites, bolstering a record of approximately 75 during 2006.^[16]
The MPAA has also forced some well known fanfiction sites such as Fanfiction.net to cease using the MPAA Rating System to rate fanfictions on the site due to copyright infringement on the rating system.

Allegation of copyright infringement by the MPAA

In 2007, English software developer Patrick Robin reported that the MPAA was illegally using his blogging platform, Forest Blog. Forest Blog is distributed for free under a linkware license; anyone who uses it must link back to his site where Forest Blog is offered for download. To remove the links back to his site, they must purchase a license. The MPAA had removed the links, without paying for a license.
Torrentfreak stated, "Amazingly, the MPAA seem to think they’re above 'formalities' like licenses and such.... Clearly, there seems to be a lack of concern by the MPAA of others' copyrighted works. Therefore, is it unsurprising that their customers seem to have the same attitude towards their movies?"^[17]

Monopoly

Since the MPAA members are the motion picture industry's most powerful studios, representing some of the world's largest media corporations, allegations of monopoly are often brought up by critics. Critics also point to the MPAA's support for closed standards that hinder competition. Other critics have suggested that films released by major studios (members of the MPAA) are given more deference in terms of ratings than films released by independents.^[18]

MiiVi.com

MPAA has been caught in creating a website claiming "fast and easy downloads" of hundreds of full-length movies after the user would install the ''MiiVi client''-program which would then search the user's harddisk for illegal copies of movies and report them to MediaDefender. The website has currently been shut down.^[19]

See also

★ Anti-copyright

★ DeCSS

★ Lucky and Flo

★ National Association of Theatre Owners

★ Operation Red Card

★ Who Makes Movies?

★ You can click, but you can't hide

★ ''This Film Is Not Yet Rated''

References

1. Ratings doc falls foul of raters
2. Classified material
3. MPAA Caught Uploading Fake Torrents
4. Find fake RIAA, MPAA torrents
5. MPAA admits to unauthorized movie copying
6. SWEDISH AUTHORITIES SINK PIRATE BAY: Huge Worldwide Supplier of Illegal Movies Told No Safe Harbors for Facilitators of Piracy!
7. Does a Free Download Equal a Lost Sale? Daniel Gross
8. The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis, , Felix, Oberholzer, , 2004
9. A Heretical View of File Sharing John Schwartz
10. The problem with MPAA's shocking piracy numbers
11. Movie Piracy Cost 6.1 Billion
12. Hollywood study examines costs of film piracy
13. P2P Is Unstoppable
14. Movie piracy more popular than ever
15. P2P Raids and Lawsuits Just don’t Work
16. STUDIOS MOVE TO THWART ILLEGAL FILE SWAPPING ON MAJOR PIRATE NETWORKS: MPAA Companies Take Action Against Torrent, eDonkey and Newsgroup Sites Used by Millions
17. MPAA Steals Code, Violates Linkware License
18.
19. MPAA's Media Defender sets up 'fake' site to catch pirates

External links

★ www.mpaa.org - MPAA website