Wikileaks Reveals BitTorrent Lawsuit Background

daria42 writes "A US diplomatic cable published by Wikileaks has revealed much of the previously hidden background behind the BitTorrent court case currently playing out in Australia's High Court, including the Motion Picture Association of America's prime mover role and US Embassy fears the trial could become portrayed as 'giant American bullies versus little Aussie battlers.'' Oops. Looks like there's a little bit of egg on the movie studios' faces!"

Re:The Truth

[Baloroth]

Fear of being "portrayed" as giants bullies is a far different thing than actually being giant bullies. Now while I think the MPAA are giant extortionist bullies, but this cable is less fear of leaking the truth and more simple image management. And the Embassy doesn't really have anything to do with the case, it looks more like they were briefed simply because it's an international case, and what they fear is America looking bad. It's not like the US Embassy is trying to defend their own actions.

The cable doesn't actually seem to contain anything scandalous, it just comfirms that the MPAA is the primary motivator behind the case. IANAL but that doesn't seem like either a surprise or a problem (legally speaking. Of course the MPAA are a bunch of scummy bastards who should be banned from legal filings pretty much period.)

Re:Dinosaurs

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Under the(now broken) assumption that "not selling" means "the consumers just have to suck it up and wait", it can be a useful price discrimination tactic. If one market is willing to pay more, you release there first(so that if there is any uncontrolled intra-market flow, remember kids, free trade is only for corporations, not for you!, it is more expensive copies flowing to rabid fanboys in lower-price countries, rather than low-price-but-legitimate copies being imported into higher priced regions). NTSC/PAL differences and DVD region coding are also directed at stopping that; but those are mostly a dead letter at this point.

There are likely also delays that stem simply from the transaction costs and delays involved in the hellish morass that is international licensing contracts; but those aren't really the product of intention, just inertia.

Commonwealth countries are, presumably, hit particularly hard by this sort of thing because they are more likely to get english-language releases, which would be generally quite acceptable to customers in the US and UK, which are prime early-release markets. Markets with less common languages may see a delay for dubbing; but it is less likely that studios would be worried about those being imported, except by relatively small expat populations.