The MPAA is now using DVD-sniffing dogs to locate pirated movies in airports.
Of course, the dogs can’t tell the difference between legal and pirated DVDs, so it’s probably a good idea to leave your porn at home (along with your hair gel, skin cream, and shoe bombs).
I know that the MPAA has been waiting for me to chime in on this whole piracy issue, so I figured now was a good time to share my opinions and advice:
First, I think both the film and recording industries need to re-frame the whole debate. They need to stop using the term "piracy" when referring to the theft of intellectual property. This may seem silly, but you’re never going to stop people by calling them pirates. People like pirates. Pirates are sexy. They need to come up with a new term, like… oozing sores. Nobody likes those.
Second, the whole "sharing movies is taking food out of the mouths of stunt performers/set dressers/musicians" approach is never going to work. Kids are smart. They’re smart enough to figure out how to illegally download music and movies and they understand that, for the most part, all the "little guys" have already been paid, that the owners of copyrighted materials are usually not the same thing as the real authors, and that it’s "The Man" that they really sticking it to. And everyone loves to stick it to the man. Especially pirates.
Finally, if the industry really wants to solve this problem, they need to make legal downloading of films easy and inexpensive. Once upon a time (waaay before the statute of limitations), I may have downloaded a tiny number of songs from the internets. But I stopped the day Apple created iTunes (It looks like they are trying to do the same thing with movies… if the studios play along). It was easy (one click!) and inexpensive (99 cents!) and it completely ended my brief career as an Oozing Sore.
But I’m still a pirate…