According to Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) President Dan Glickman, the Advanced Access Content System (AACS) support for "managed copy" of HD DVD and Blu-ray movies will be available before the end of the year.

This will finally let users create their own official backup copies. Whenever we talked about backup copies, we all know that there's potential for exploitation. This is the very reason why studios are going to implement some other security measures.

Accordingly, once the "managed copy" specification is already in place, studios will be able to specify what options they would like to offer and for how much. An example of which is users having an option to create just one free backup copy.

Other options include creating a version suitable for mobile usage for a nominal fee and multiple copies at discounted pricing. The HD DVD Promotional Group added that the new feature is going to be retroactive meaning discs sold prior to the "managed copy" support still have to deal with DRM.

On the other hand, the same is not true for the Blu-ray format. One major Blu-ray partner maintains that there is a fear that managed copy could be exploited and provide a backdoor to AACS security. Speaking of which, certain reports are saying that the recently compromised AACS security is delaying the release of the new feature.

How does tobacco use affect ESRB ratings? With that question in mind, we've found some very interesting info regarding tobacco use in games. Curmudgeon Gamer collected some numbers, and found out that 29 out of 141 games that have tobacco use got an E rating. 18 of these are E10+ games, 91 are T, and only 3 are given with an M rating.

Apparently, games that are supposed to be for everyone can contain tobacco or alcohol use or references. On the other hand, 75% of movies with "even a fleeting glimpse of smoking" are rated R, equivalent of ESRB's M. This raises the question: How does tobacco use affect ESRB rating?

According to The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) CEO, movies that got rated R generally received that rating for other reasons. Well, it would be pretty interesting if an animated movie like Shrek got R for smoking. Seems like it's different when it comes to video games since more E games that are aimed for everyone including young audiences, have alcohol and tobacco use or references than games geared for mature audiences.

 

Founded in 1994 due to nationwide furor over violence in videogames (no GTA at the time kiddies, the big guns were Mortal Kombat and Night Trap), the Interactive Digital Software Association is set to enforce regulation of the gaming industry via a mandatory ratings system. Moreover, the IDSA served as a unified voice to represent their collective interests to the American public and government.

IDSA quickly gave birth to two things known to all gamers: the Entertainment Software Ratings Board and the Electronic Entertainment Expo. The company, which we've known as the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) since 2003,  has spent the last 13 years fending government regulation, fighting piracy, and serving as the industry's face.

However, the ESA does a little more than that - and they spend for more than just what has been mentioned. A Gamespot feature sheds light on just how much the ESA has to to spend in lobbying just to get the government to listen (or see it their way, lobbying is after all a legalized form of pseudo-bribery).

The total tally? In 2005 they spend US$ 2 million in federal lobbying efforts, and from the looks of things, they're set to exceed that in 2006. They're spending more than the Motion Picture Association of America. What's good about this is (despite the spending for online gambling and other debatable endeavors), a lot of the money goes to efforts that we all could safely call, gamer-centric.

If you want a better breakdown on how much they're spending, you can check out our "Read" link below. We warn you though, it's a bit closer to Wikipedia entry than a feature, but overall it's very informative. Makes you appreciate the ESA more for spending so much just so that GTA isn't deemed illegal to play.

In a recent interview conducted by The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft founder, and soon to be ex-leader, admitted to enjoying a variety of videos that were put up on the web on sites like You Tube. These videos are commonly uploaded by people who do not own the copy rights to the video. Technically, this amounts to video piracy which is the bane of organizations like the RIAA and MPAA.

The following excerpt from the Interview shows that Gates, like many less famous accused video pirates, says he was not doing this maliciously.

Interviewer: You watch physics lectures and Harlem Globetrotters [on YouTube]?

Gates: This social-networking thing takes you to crazy places.

Interviewer: But those were stolen, correct?

Gates: Stolen's a strong word. It's copyrighted content that the owner wasn't paid for. So yes.

I wonder if  Mr. Gates would come to the defense of some of the people that are currently being sued by the MPAA for pirating their intellectual property? We all recognize that piracy is wrong. However, the point is that it is not necessarily appropriate for large corporate-owned organizations like the MPAA to apply the amount of legal force that they do to individuals regardless of their intent and the damage or lack of damage caused by the situation.

With the MPAA and the RIAA routinely bringing lawsuits against teenagers and even twelve year-old kids, it has become obvious that some perspective, a little restraint and some common sense would go a long way toward bringing a level of fairness to the issue of copy protection.