MPAA Apparently Silently Shut Down Its Legal Movies Search Engine
Furnished content.
In 2015, with much fanfare, the MPAA released its own search engine of sorts as WhereToWatch.com. The idea behind the site was to combat the argument that people pirate films because there are too few legal alternatives. The MPAA built the site to show where those legal alternatives do in fact exist. Left unaddressed, of course, were questions about how useful and convenient those alternatives were, how users had to navigate through a myriad of restrictive policies for those legal alternatives, and how terrible Hollywood must be in promoting its legal alternatives if the only thing needed to stop all this piracy was an MPAA search engine.On top of that, WhereToWatch served as something of an excuse for many draconian polices the MPAA was pushing for all along. By being able to point to the search engine as "proof" that all kinds of legal alternatives to piracy were readily available, the MPAA argued that policies such as "notice and staydown" as well as site-blocking were legitimate pursuits. Somewhat predictably and with a heaving helping of irony, WhereToWatch received multiple DMCA takedown notices for its search results, demonstrating how perilous DMCA takedowns have become.And now comes the news that the MPAA actually shuttered the site months ago.The MPAA pulled the plug on the service a few months ago. And where the mainstream media covered its launch in detail, the shutdown received zero mentions. So why did the site fold? According to MPAA Vice President of Corporate Communications, Chris Ortman, it was no longer needed as there are many similar search engines out there.“Given the many search options commercially available today, which can be found on the MPAA website, WheretoWatch.com was discontinued at the conclusion of 2017,” Ortman informs TF. “There are more than 140 lawful online platforms in the United States for accessing film and television content, and more than 460 around the world,” he adds. That is all absolutely true today, though it was also true three years ago when the site was launched. The simple fact of the matter is that the site did little to serve any real public customer base. Yes, legal alternatives to piracy exist. Everyone knows that, just as they know that there are far too many hoops and restrictions around which to jump that have nothing to do with price. The MPAA and its client organizations have long asserted strict control over their product to the contrary of public demand. That is, and has always been, the problem.On top of all that, the MPAA showed its no better at promoting its site than it was at promoting the legal alternatives to pirating movies.Perhaps the lack of interest from the U.S. public played a role as well. The site never really took off and according to traffic estimates from SimilarWeb and Alexa, most of the visitors came from Iran, where the site was unusable due to a geo-block. Look, the basis for this effort was a good one: promote legit movie-watching to customers currently pirating. That's laudable. But Hollywood is in the business of convincing the public to do so every bit as much as the public is obligated to buy Hollywood's products. It's not enough to build a search engine to the current unwanted offerings and call it a day.You have to actully innovate.
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Bad News For 'Privacy Shield': As Expected, EU's Top Court Will Examine Legality Of Sending Personal Data To US
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Last October, Techdirt wrote about an important decision by the Irish High Court in a case concerning data transfers from the EU to the US. The original complaint was brought by Max Schrems in the wake of revelations by Edward Snowden back in 2013 that the NSA had routine access to user information held by companies like Facebook. As the post explained, the judge found that there were important legal issues that could only be answered by the EU's highest court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). The High Court said that it intended to refer various questions to the CJEU, but has done so only now, as Schrems explains in an update on the case (pdf). He points out that the eleven questions sent to the CJEU (found at the end of the document embedded below) go further than considering general questions of law:While I was of the view that the Irish Data Protection Authority could have decided over this case itself, but I welcome that the issue will hopefully be dealt with once and forever by the Court of Justice. What is remarkable, is that the High Court also included questions on the 'Privacy Shield', which has the potential for a full review of all EU-US data transfer instruments in this case. That more or less guarantees that the CJEU will rule definitively on whether the Privacy Shield framework for transferring EU personal data to the US is legal under EU data protection law. And as Mike noted in his October post, it is hard to see the CJEU approving Privacy Shield, which does little to address the court's earlier criticisms of the preceding US-EU agreement, the Safe Harbor framework, which the same court struck down in 2015. That would be a serious problem for companies like Facebook and Google whose data is routinely accessed by the NSA. As Schrems suggests:In the long run the only reasonable solution is to cut back on mass surveillance laws. If there is no such political solution between the EU and the US, Facebook would have to split global and US services in two systems and keep European data outside of reach for US authorities, or face billions in penalties under the upcoming EU data protection regulation. In theory, a ruling that Facebook has broken EU privacy laws by allowing the NSA to access the personal data of EU citizens would not necessarily be an issue for other companies not involved in these surveillance programs. However, there is a cloud on the horizon even for them. As Schrems explains, data transfers from the EU to the US typically use contract law in the form of "Standard Contractual Clauses" (SCCs) to lay down the legal framework. Schrems says he is fine with that approach, because the Irish Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) can use an "emergency clause", built in to SCCs, to halt dodgy data sharing in cases like Facebook. However:The Irish Data Protection Commissioner took the view that there is a larger, systematic issue concerning SCCs. The DPC took the view, that as the validity of the SCCs is at stake the case should therefore be referred to the CJEU. The danger with this decision to ask the CJEU to examine the validity of SCCs is that if it rules against them, it would affect every company using them, whether or not they were involved in NSA surveillance. Schrems has a theory as to why the DPC has taken this risky route:I am of the view the Standard Contractual Clauses are perfectly valid, as they would allow the DPC to do its job and suspend individual problematic data flows, such as Facebook's. It is still unclear to me why the DPC is taking the extreme position that the SCCs should be invalidated across the board, when a targeted solution is available. The only explanation that I have is that that they want to shift the responsibility back to Luxembourg [where the CJEU sits] instead of deciding themselves. Given the massive knock-on effects that the ruling could have on digital flows across the Atlantic, including political consequences, the desire for the Irish DPC to give that responsibility to someone else is plausible. The CJEU is unlikely to feel intimidated in the same way, which means that US companies must now worry about the prospect of SCCs being struck down along with Privacy Shield.Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+
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