News written by Jari Ketola (November, 2004)

US actor Carmine Caridi has been fined $300,000 for distributing screener copies of movies that were nominated for Oscars. Caridi, 70, handed out copies of several movies to Russel Sprague, who he thought was just a film buff. Instead Sprague, 51, made copies of the movies and distributed them over the Internet.

According to authorities Mr Caridi sent copies of about 60 movies to Mr Sprague. Caridi was sued by Warner Bros for distributing The Last Samurai and Mystic River, and was fined $150,000 per movie by the US District Court in Los Angeles. He was also sued by Columbia Pictures. That case is still pending.

Sprague has pleaded guilty to his charges.

The movie industry hands out screener copies to the press and members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in hopes for getting an Oscar nomination. These copies, published long before any commercially available copy of the movie is available, have long been the source for pirated copies of movies.

Last year the movie industry started paying more attention to the issue which caused a clash between the smaller studios and the MPAA. MPAA banned screener copies from all but the members of the Academy. Smaller studios sued MPAA over the decision because they felt that it greatly diminished the chances of smaller films receiving nominations.

Nullsoft has released what it calls the "Final Editon (for now)" of Winamp 5. Apparently the assumptions of Nullsoft's future have been correct.

The new version (5.06) has the following change log:

-Fixed crashbug when clearing the playlist and then right clicking on the songticker
-Security bug fixes
-Lots of small bugfixes
-JTFE v0.96ff

The US Senate may be voting on the Intellectual Property Protection Act (IPPA) this week. The bill combines aspects of several proposed copyright and piracy acts, and has raised concerns in several groups.

The bill, if passed, would make many P2P users, and digital consumer devices criminally liable for copyright infringement. While skipping "offending" content on DVDs would be permitted, devices that would skip forced advertisements on DVDs would be illegal. Especially Disney has excelled in putting 30 minutes of trailers and advertisements on their DVDs.

Additionally the IPPA would permit, or rather obligate the Department of Justice to file civil lawsuits against suspected pirates. Bringing a video camera into a movie theater with the intent to tape the movie could lead to a three year imprisonment, fines or both.

The entertainment industry, RIAA and MPAA both feel that the proposal has many aspects that are essential for the survival of the industry.

The groups that oppose the act fear that it might be pushed through in a lame-duck session this week. They are calling for the Senate to postpone the consideration of the bill until there's enough time for proper hearings and debate.

Microsoft estimates that the first day sales of Halo 2 will reach $100 million. The game went on sale around the world on Tuesday.

1.5 million units of the game were sold before the launch, which already adds up to $78 million. The "regular version" of the game costs $49.99, while a Limited Edition, with custom case and making-of DVD is available for $54.99.

Some analysts expect Halo 2 to sell over 10 million units -- half of those already in November. Halo, which currently holds the all time best seller title for Xbox, has sold 5 million units to date.

Feel like discussing Halo 2 or other gaming? Why not visit Blasteroids.com!

Source: Reuters

The DVB Steering Board has approved the addition of two new codecs to be used for broadcast Transport Stream. The codecs accepted are the H.264/AVC video codec (MPEG-4 Part 10) and the High Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding (HE-AAC) audio codec.

The new document mandates support of Main Profile for H.264/AVC SDTV receivers, with an option for the use of High Profile. The support of High Profile is mandated for H.264/AVC HDTV receivers.

Peter MacAvock, DVB’s Executive Director said: "This document is one of the most important DVB documents, and a key to ensuring the interoperability of DVB equipment and transmissions. It is the basis of all MPEG-2 DVB decoders in the market. The addition of H.264/AVC and HE-AAC paves the way for using these exciting codecs in mainstream DVB applications like HDTV."

The earlier DVB specification included MPEG-2 video, MPEG-1 Layer II audio, Dolby AC-3 audio and DTS audio.