Top 10 Legal Disclaimers in Hollywood History

By Eriq Gardner
THR, Esq. | Article Link

In honor of Friday's post about The King's Speech being threatened over use of the "No Animals Harmed" disclaimer, we thought it'd be interesting to take a look at creative uses of legal warranties & disclaimers in movies. By now, most cinephiles are familiar with the standard "Any resemblance to actual persons —living or dead— is purely coincidental." Turns out that filmmakers have turned cursory legalese into an art form, offering up their own disclaimers. Here's our list of the best:

1. "Any resemblance between Hynkel the dictator and the Jewish barber is purely co-incidental" — The Great Dictator


2. "It is the stated position of the United States Air Force that their safeguards would prevent the occurrence of such events as are depicted in this film" — Dr. Strangelove

More than 100,000 People Have Been Sued for Sharing Movies in Past Year

By Eriq Gardner
THR, Esq. | Article Link

Suing file-sharers has gone viral.

Since we first broke the news about a new Washington D.C. enterprise using an innovative legal tactic to pursue movie torrent downloaders, U.S. courts have seen an explosion of activity on the file-sharing front.

In fact, according to data collected by TorrentFreak, more than 100,000 P2P users have been targeted in lawsuits in the past year alone. What started out as a handful of small film producers suing has grown to include indie studios like Voltage and Nu Image to a wide swath of the adult entertainment industry. 

Copyright and Censorship

By Terry Hart
Copyhype | Article Link

On January 19, 2011, members of New York City’s theater community and human rights supporters gathered to mark the one month anniversary of Belarus’ contested presidential election. The election was widely condemned as fraudulent, accompanied by the arrests of many peaceful protesters in Belarus with thousands more beaten.

100 Internet Users Responsible for Most Unlawful Copyright P2P File Sharing Content

By MarcJ
ISPreview | Article Link

A scientific study has estimated that just 100 internet users are ultimately responsible for publishing most (almost 67%) of all the "illegal" (unlawful) copyright content (music, tv shows, movies, games and applications) on public P2P (BitTorrent) file sharing networks. The primary motivation appears to be money and the study identifies several broadband ISPs, including one UK provider (Virgin Media), as unwittingly playing a big part.

The study, which set out to examine the behaviour of the users who are responsible for publishing over 55,000 files on the two main portals (Mininova and The Pirate Bay), was carried out by Spain's Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M). The content they posted ultimately accounted for "75 percent of [all] the downloads" (i.e. by end-users).

Music Piracy is Rampant Even as Labels License Online Sites

By Kristen Schweizer

Bloomberg | Article Link

Hundreds of online music services licensed by record labels in recent years have done little to stem rampant illegal downloading, which is pushing down the value of recorded music.

Digital piracy is still rising along with websites and forums linking to content accessible by piracy services, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said in its annual report today. Global revenue from music via the Internet and mobile phones rose 6 percent to $4.6 billion, accounting for 29 percent of record companies’ sales. The rate of growth was less than 2009’s 12 percent increase.

Record companies have been licensing online music services such as Spotify and Rdio and relying on premium ads around online videos to help make up for a drop in CD sales as more physical shops shutter and online piracy shows no signs of waning. Brazil and Spain are among countries with the highest proportion of people visiting unlicensed music sites, and the majority of content distributed on file-sharing networks infringes copyright, the IFPI said.