{"id":28,"date":"2005-01-28T16:28:43","date_gmt":"2005-01-28T23:28:43","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=28"},"modified":"2006-02-28T15:38:25","modified_gmt":"2006-02-28T23:38:25","slug":"free-software-from-the-mpaa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/free-software-from-the-mpaa\/","title":{"rendered":"Free Software From The MPAA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/imdb.com\/news\/sb\/2005-01-27#film4\">From the Internet Movie Database:<\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>At the same time, [the MPAA] released free software that it said would help parents scan their computers to find file-swapping software and pirated films.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I am most curious about what this free software does. Unfortunately, I find no mention of such software over on mpaa.org. <\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>What do you suppose it does? Scan for filenames with known multmedia extensions (.mp3, .avi, .mpg, etc.)? Then compare the base filenames with a list of popular movie titles? Does anyone dare install it for the purpose of experimentation?<\/p>\n<p>I did a little more digging&#8230; in their <a href=\"http:\/\/mpaa.org\/Campaign\/2005_01_26_Press.pdf\">January 26th press release <em>(PDF file)<\/em><\/a> they name the software as &#8220;Parent File Scan&#8221;. Some Googling reveals that this software is hosted on their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.respectcopyrights.org\/\">http:\/\/www.respectcopyrights.org\/<\/a> site, a link you may remember from those propaganda pieces that precede theater attractions these days. The site is Flash-driven, so they do not score points for trying to make this software accessible.<\/p>\n<p>Further searching on Google reveals numerous news sites parroting the original press release. However, <a href=\"http:\/\/p2pnet.net\/story\/3057\">P2PNet has a story<\/a> explaining how they almost obtained the software. They found an inactive link to the .msi installation file  hosted by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dtecnet.dk\/\">DtecNet<\/a>, a rather vacant site. This investigation is at a standstill unless someone has a copy of that ParentalFileWatchSetup.msi file.<\/p>\n<p><em>Update January 29, 2005:<\/em> I have been <a href=\"http:\/\/arstechnica.com\/news.ars\/post\/20050128-4563.html\">reading reports<\/a> that the software&#8217;s algorithm is a bit naive and tags anything that looks like a media file. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MPAA releases free pirate-classifying software? (Updated)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-multimedia-presswatch","category-open-source-multimedia"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/multimedia.cx\/eggs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}