Anti Piracy

Two cousins from Los Angeles have been arrested on allegations that they stole and made bootleg copies of Oscar "screeners" including "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," "Superman Returns" and "The Queen." John Acas, 22, was arrested in his home Monday by Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies after uploading copies to the Internet and attempting to sell the movies to an informant, authorities said. Sheryl Demesa, Acas' 22-year-old cousin, was arrested the same day at an L.A.

Boy Scouts can earn badges for woodcarving, raising rabbits and firing shotguns. But in the Los Angeles area, Scouts will now be able to earn their stripes by proselytizing about the evils of copyright piracy. Officials with the local Boy Scouts and the Motion Picture Assn. of America on Friday unveiled the Respect Copyrights Activity Patch -- emblazoned with a large circle "C" copyright sign along with a film reel and musical notes.

Eager to smooth the way for next week's visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao, officials from that country are expected to lift a ban on U.S. beef and move more aggressively to shut factories that pirate American movies and software, analysts say. Those announcements could come after a closely watched meeting in Washington today attended by Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi, U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman, Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns.

Despite the hand-wringing of all the publicists associated with small, review-driven movies who need to get their films seen by as many Oscars voters as possible, 74% of the 5,000 Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences members did manage to plug in their spankin' new Cinea machines.

A California-based digital-rights group and the Texas attorney general sued Sony BMG Music Entertainment on Monday for selling compact discs with anti-piracy software that allegedly leaves computers vulnerable to hackers and viruses. The cases highlight the narrow line walked by the recording industry as it experiments with ways to deter bootleggers. To be effective, copy-protection systems must be tough to crack.

Dan Glickman, the movie industry's top lobbyist, was doing his best. Determined to convince a group of UCLA students how wrong it is to copy a movie off the Internet, he was searching for a way to drive his point home. First, the chairman of the Motion Picture Assn. of America told the 60 or so students gathered in the Ackerman Grand Ballroom about "the power of movies to change people's lives." To shore up his credentials, he mentioned that his son, Jonathan, is a movie producer.

The fallout from a hidden copy-protection program that Sony BMG Music Entertainment put on some CDs got worse Tuesday as researchers said Sony's suggested method for removing the program widened the security hole that the original software created. Sony has moved to recall the discs in question. But consumers who have listened to them on their computers or tried to remove the software the CDs installed could still be vulnerable.

After a chorus of criticism, Sony Corp.'s music division said it was distributing a free software patch to reveal hidden files that automatically installed onto hard drives when some of its music CDs were played on personal computers. The offending technology was designed to thwart music piracy.

Music website operator Artistdirect Inc. said Monday that it had purchased online anti-piracy firm MediaDefender Inc. for $42.5 million in cash. The acquisition of MediaDefender, which uses technology to stymie unauthorized downloading of songs by flooding file-sharing networks with bogus tracks, is part of an ongoing restructuring plan by Los Angeles-based Artistdirect.