“Copyright infringement also violates your ISP’s terms of service and could lead to limitation or suspension of your Internet service. You should take immediate action to prevent your Internet account from being used for illegal activities.”
It is a statement that makes many a college student shudder in fear when they realize the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) finally caught them torrenting various movies and knows their real name and address. Usually, this sort of ‘cease and desist’ scare tactic keeps your average pirate from illegally downloading movies for quite some time.
The thing is, they’ve recently started sending this letter to Google. About 100 times in fact. Essentially, they are threatening to disconnect Google from the internet. GOOGLE.
Of course, most of this article was written in jest: the MPAA is not going to take Google off the internet, nor are they going to be suing them for copyright infringement any time soon.
The letters were sent to Google and/or it’s employees mostly because people were caught downloading movies on Google’s public Wi-Fi service or in a few cases for Google employees using company resources to get a free copy of ‘Black Swan’ before they go home.
Essentially what happened is that the companies that the copyright holders hired to track people who torrent their movies caught a few people doing it on Google’s time and sent their auto-responder ‘cease and desist’ message to them because of it.
The idea that Google is at risk of losing its connection to the internet is ludicrous, but fairly entertaining, and as such I share this story with you today.
What would happen if the MPAA actually managed to get Google’s internet service suspended? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Not Sure If Serious screencap is a meme and is used under fair use.
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