Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

MPAA Under Investigation Over Illegal Payoffs

The New York Post is report­ing that two NYPD officers from the Staten Island Task Force are being invest­ig­ated for allegedly receiv­ing illegal pay­offs from the MPAA, fol­low­ing suc­cess­ful busts of sellers of pir­ated DVDs.

It is alleged that invest­ig­at­ive agents of the MPAA, the film industry car­tel respons­ible for the recent shut­ting down of sev­eral BitTorrent tracker sites, would tip off the NYPD about loc­a­tions where pir­ated DVDs were being sold, and would then, once the raids had occurred, pay gra­tu­it­ies to the officers involved, amount­ing to some hun­dreds of dol­lars. The MPAA denies the allegations.

“We don’t give cash to police officers,” said Bill Shannon, an MPAA anti-piracy official.