The Motion Picture Association defends its copyright . . . not . . .

[ritaxis]

This is one of those stories that I sometimes think are made up, but as it happens, the person this happened to is the son of my best friend and the best friend of my son. (Got that?) I've seen the email he got, and heard the story from him and his mother.

The young man in question is a graduate student at Columbia (bioinformatics). One day his account was frozen, because the university had received an email from the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America)accusing Sam of pirating episodes of E.R. Only, here's the episodes of E.R. they claimed he pirated:

Infringement Detail:
Infringing Work: E.R. (TV)
Filepath: e books\Chomsky\
Filename: 6_undermining_democracy.avi
First Found: 15 Jul 2004 01:56:6 EDT (GMT -0400)
Last Found: 15 Jul 2004 01:56:6 EDT (GMT -0400)
Filesize: 114,730k
IP Address: 160.39.41.96
Network: DirectConnect
Protocol: DirectConnect
Username: NotoriousPraetorious++


Infringing Work: E.R. (TV)
Filepath: e books\Chomsky\
Filename: 5_new_word_order.avi
First Found: 15 Jul 2004 01:56:6 EDT (GMT -0400)
Last Found: 15 Jul 2004 01:56:6 EDT (GMT -0400)
Filesize: 98,762k
IP Address: 160.39.41.96
Network: DirectConnect
Protocol: DirectConnect
Username: NotoriousPraetorious++

Now, isn't it odd that a television drama show should have copyrighted two Noam Chomsky lectures? Sam queried Chomsky as to whether the MPAA did have rights to his lectures, and Chomsky allowed as how he didn't know who the MPAA was but they certainly did not hold the copyright to his speeches.

Apparently, Sam is not allowed to sue the MPAA for the loss of work time while his account was shut dow, or the false accusation, or the hassle Sam had to go through to prove his innocence to the university.

The MPAA can apparently accuse anybody of anything at anytime with all the impunity they want.

This seems wrong to me, but it's what Sam says he found out.

Comments

[brooksmoses]

That's pretty remarkable that there's nothing he can do about it, given that under the DMCA (which I presume is what the MPAA's stuff was filed under), the accusations must be filed in such a fashion that a false accusation is legally considered perjury.

My guess, though, is that the MPAA didn't actually file the DMCA complaint -- they probably just threatened to. And, if they're not actually filing an official complaint, they probably have no legal liability for such. However, the university IMNSHO ought not to have done a thing unless the MPAA filed the proper complaint. Actually, given that I'm reasonably sure the proper complaint requires signatures, they can't have done so by email. Insofar as that's true, the university would be who he'd ought to sue.