uMPAA Will Pay You $20,000 For Your Pro-Copyright Researchr

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  The MPAA’s website for its research grant program makes no mention that research papers must be in line with the group’s stance on copyright and piracy, but a leaked e-mail from the MPAA General Counsel tells a different story.

  Are you a college-affiliated academic who could use an extra $20,000? Do you have strong feelings in favor of copyright protections? Then the Motion Picture Association of America has a deal for you!

  The folks at TorrentFreak point out that the MPAA has been quietly running a research grant program that pays up to $20,000 for research into “increasing public understanding of digital technology, marketplace, and intellectual property policy issues that affect creators and distributors in the United States and around the world.”

  Ostensibly, that’s a good thing. Consumers and businesses should all be having an informed discussion on the evolving impact of copyright and intellectual property in the digital age. It’s a complicated and sometimes counterintuitive issue that has implications for everything from international trade agreements to some stupid free video game your 4-year-old plays on your old iPod Touch.

  And former U.S. Senator-turned-MPAA CEO Chris Dodd himself has called on the academic community to “provide unbiased observations, data analysis, historical context and important revelations about how these changes are impacting the film industry.”

  But it’s what is going unsaid publicly by the MPAA that is cause for concern. A recently leaked e-mail from the top MPAA lawyer to executives at Paramount, NBC Universal, Sony, Disney, Warner Bros, and FOX reveals something the MPAA doesn’t put in its website for the research grant program.

  The MPAA General Counsel writes that the goal of the grant program is twofold: “to solicit pro-copyright academic research papers and to identify pro-copyright scholars who we can cultivate for further public advocacy.”

  First, this statement seems to be counter to Dodd’s belief in unbiased research by referring to the solicited works as “pro-copyright.” That would seem to imply that any research that calls into question the MPAA’s stance on these issues would not be accepted.

  Beyond that, the MPAA isn’t just looking for research that it can use to bolster its case for stronger anti-piracy laws and stricter rules on consumers’ use of their products. It’s also aiming to develop a stable of go-to talking heads and researchers for the long term.

  And, as TorrentFreak notes, that appears to be where the real MPAA money is for academics, pointing to the more than one million dollars that the MPAA has provided for the Carnegie Mellon project on piracy. CMU research has resulted in multiple papers that the MPAA now uses to support its position on the topic.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uFTC Shuts Down Two More Fake News Sites Pushing Weight-Loss Productsr

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  A link from Sale Slash takes consumers to this fake news site.

   

  For years, the Federal Trade Commission has been combatting scammy marketers of weight-loss products who use fake news sites, fictional reporters, and bogus celebrity endorsements, but people keep trying to pull these cons on consumers. This morning, the FTC announced yet another takedown of a sketchy diet pill marketer using lookalike news sites to sell its products.

  The FTC announced that it obtained a court order temporarily halting California-based Sale Slash and Purists Choice from peddling supposed weight-loss supplements; a first step in recovering funds lost by consumers who purchased the company’s products.

  According to the FTC complaint [PDF], since at least 2012 the companies used affiliate marketers to deceptively advertise and sell a variety of weight-loss supplements including Premium Green Coffee, Pure Garcinia Cambogia, Premium White Kidney Bean Extract, Pure Forskolin Extract, and Pure Caralluma Fimbriata Extract.

  The hired marketers routinely sent illegal spam emails and posted banner ads online that led consumers to fake news sites designed to appear as if an independent consumer reported, rather than a paid advertiser, had reviewed and endorsed the products.

  The FTC alleges that these fake news sites made false weight-loss claims and used phony celebrity endorsements – including one from Oprah – to promote the diet pills.

  Much like previous fake news sites used photos of French newswoman Mélissa  Theuriau for their fake “Staff Reporter Helen Hasman,” the example above uses an image of BBC news presenter Ellie Crisell for the fictional “Staff Reporter Helen Crisell.” In fact, the real Crisell has not only repeatedly warned her Twitter followers about this fakery, her Twitter profile now clearly states “I DO NOT endorse any weight loss pills!”

  Marketers allegedly used stolen email user accounts to send the users’ contacts spam messages so that the emails looked to be from a friend or family member instead of the company’s affiliates.

  The emails typically contained short messages such as, “Breaking news…” or “Hi! Oprah says it’s excellent,” followed by hyperlinks to the products.

  Banner ads used by the marketers generally including claims such as “1 Tip for a tiny belly,” “Cut down on a bit of your belly every day following this 1 old weird tip,” and “Garcinia Cambogia Exposed – Miracle Diet or Scam?”

  Each time a consumer clicked the banner through to one of the fake news sites and purchased the supplement, Sale Slash and Purists Choice paid the marketer a commission, according to the FTC.

  In addition to halting the operation of Sale Slash and Purists Choice, the court order freezes their assists and appoints a temporary receiver. The FTC ultimately seeks to recover funds from the companies that would be used to provide refunds to consumers who were duped into purchasing the supposed weight-loss supplements.

  FTC Halts Deceptive Marketing of Bogus Weight-Loss Products [Federal Trade Commission]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uDean Foods Moving Its 31 Milk Brands Under One National Namer

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  (Tambako the Jaguar)

  Soon your regional milk brand might be getting a bit of an image makeover, as Dean Foods says it’s taking all 31 of its brands and pushing them under one national umbrella in an effort to unite against struggling milk sales.

  From Borden and Lehigh Valley brands in the South, to Land O’Lakes in the Midwest and Tuscan in the Northeast, all of Dean’s regular, non-chocolate milk brands will now come with the DairyPure brand slapped on packaging, along with the regional names already in use, reports the Wall Street Journal, starting this month. The old labels will appear alongside the DairyPure name on cartons and jugs and will be in the same print size.

  It’s smushing all the brands under one label in an effort to revive interest — and therefore, sales — in its milk products. Dean currently has a 36% share of the U.S. milk market and wants to keep that while also trying to grab a larger chunk of the business.

  Dean’s hoping that shifting consumer trends towards foods that seem more natural and local will make the DairyPure brand work, touting the fact that the milk ships within hours “fresh from your local dairy,” as well as the fact that it’s tested for antibiotics and comes from cows free of growth hormones.

  “There has been a dream of us having a national milk brand for years,” Chief Executive Gregg Tanner told the WSJ, something that wasn’t possible until the company could bring together its collection of milk processors and get them to work together, as well as bring all their food-safety and other quality standards to the same place.

  Dean Foods Bets on One National Milk Brand [Wall Street Journal]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uBeing Declared Dead By The Social Security Administration Is Very Inconvenientr

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• Being dead is very inconvenient, but having the government believe that you’re dead when you aren’t is even more inconvenient. Yet the Social Security Administration accidentally declares about 9,000 people living in the United States dead every year. Yet when this happens to someone, they struggle to find help and to get anyone to believe them so they can be brought back to life financially.

  Errors happen everywhere, it’s true, and the Social Security Administration processes 2.8 million actual deaths per year. That relatively low error rate isn’t comforting when you’re the one locked out of your own bank accounts and not receiving your Social Security checks. CBS Sacramento’s Kurtis Ming followed the case of a 78-year-old woman who had exactly this happen.

  She learned that she was dead when she received a letter from her bank. The bank expressed its corporate condolences, and locked her out of her account. The Social Security Administration also stopped her retirement checks, and her health insurance also stopped. That’s fine if you’re dead, but not if you are still alive and in need of your prescriptions.

  Social Security maintains the Death Master File, which is very useful if you’re performing genealogy research on someone who died in the last eight decades or so, but may be less useful when it uses many sources of data to report deaths. Hospitals, hospices, funeral homes, families, and banks all The 78-year-old aspiring zombie in California learned that a mortuary had accidentally reported her dead. Why? Nobody knows. She can’t get a copy of her own death certificate for privacy reasons.

  Call Kurtis Investigates: Social Security Erroneously Declares 9,000 Dead a Year [CBS Sacramento]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uMcDonald’s Big Turnaround Solution: Sell More Restaurants To Franchiseesr

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  (Mike Mozart)

  When new McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook said he would unveil turnaround plans for the sagging fast food giant on May 4, some people were expecting more than just a decision reorganize the company’s international business and sell off a bunch of company-owned stores to franchisees.

  But that seems to be the whole takeaway from this morning’s big announcement by Easterbrook, which turned out to be standard sort of streamlining and cost-cutting that any huge, global company could benefit from, but some say is lacking in any vision for how to change McDonald’s image, menu, or appeal to the franchisees that control most of the McDonald’s stores.

  In fact, franchisees already own some 81% of all the McDonald’s restaurants in the world. But under Easterbrook’s plan, McDonald’s corporate would refranchise around 3,500 company-owned stores to put them in the hands of franchisees. The goal is to reduce the corporate ownership of McDonald’s restaurants to only 10% worldwide.

  While that’s good in the short term for McDonald’s bottom line, letting the company continue to make money off of these locations without having to pay for their operation, it doesn’t do anything to deal with the recent complaints from franchisees.

  In a recent survey of franchise owners in the U.S., a number of them complained about the company’s allegedly self-defeating efforts to draw customers in.

  “They talk menu reduction to help our people, simplify our menu for customers, but add products to help sales and it does not work,” wrote one franchisee in that survey.

  Another owner said that “McDonald’s management does not know what it wants to be,” testing a slower, more customized sandwich option while simultaneously pushing the get-em-in-get-em-out bargain foods the chain is known for.

  In recent weeks, McDonald’s has announced certain menu changes intended to save restaurants the costs of offering too many items that don’t sell well. Nine menu items have been cut already this year.

  The controversial TasteCrafted test program (originally known as Create Your Taste), which allows customers to custom-order their sandwiches and includes new ingredients, has apparently been successful enough for McDonald’s to continue rolling it out. However, franchisees’ concerns about the higher costs and longer wait times recently led McDonald’s to simplify the program by including fewer options.

  It’s not just franchisees who are likely to be let down by today’s lukewarm turnaround plan. Analysts say that investors were expecting something more radical from the new CEO.

  “The market expected more,” one analyst tells Bloomberg. “Easterbrook set the expectation that he would present a novel solution to McDonald’s woes.” Instead, today’s refranchising decision “could have been announced on a quarterly earnings call.”

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uFiat Chrysler Offers Employees Chance For Free College Education At A For-Profit Universityr

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  (Ralph Krawczyk Jr)

  Providing the opportunity for employees to obtain a college degree is a worthy intention. Just as Starbucks announced in 2014 that it would finance the college dreams of workers around the country, Fiat Chrysler has unveiled a similar program today. There’s only one slight difference: the university that Chrysler has partnered with is a for-profit college.

  Fiat Chrysler’s U.S. division announced Monday that it has teamed up with Strayer University (you know, the school with Steve Harvey in the commercials) to create the Degrees@Work program, allowing eligible employees to earn a college degree.

  Full- and part-time employees who have worked at one of Fiat Chrysler’s Dodge, Jeep, Ram and Fiat dealerships for 30 days are eligible to enroll in any of the more than 40 Strayer programs offered online or on-campus without spending a dime of their own money, Forbes reports.

  In order to offer the opportunity to employees, dealerships must pay a flat fee to Fiat Chrysler to cover part of the program, which will reportedly cover tuition, books and other expenses.

  The company did not provide information on the average cost of the dealerships’ fees. However, Forbes reports that the average bachelor’s degree from Strayer costs about $42,000.

  The program not only aims to educate employees, but to improve retention at Fiat Chrysler dealerships, the company said.

  “Many of our dealers have expressed concern over the availability of talent to fill open positions due to business growth and turnover in their stores, especially in metro markets,” Al Gardner, Head of Dealer Network Development, and President & CEO of the Chrysler Brand in the U.S., said in a statement. “Our goal is to position our dealer network as the ‘employers of choice.’

  Degrees@Work will first launch at Chrysler’s dealerships in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee. Eligible employees at the more than 360 locations in those states can now enroll for summer and fall terms at Strayer.

  Employees can choose from more than 40 degree programs including business administration, accounting, education and information systems.

  Fiat Chrysler says that the 24/7 access to Strayer courses will allow the employees-turned-students the flexibly to design their education around their jobs.

  To expedite employee’s education, the company says that Strayer will offer the new students credit for training and work experience already obtained through their work at the dealership.

  The company expects to rollout the program national later this year.

  FCA US Dealers to Offer Employees No-Cost, No-Debt College Education [Fiat Chrysler Automobiles]
  Chrysler to offer free college tuition to all dealership employees [Forbes]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uSally Beauty Looking Into “Unusual Activity” On Payment Cards At Some U.S. Storesr

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  (JeepersMedia)

  In what has become an unfortunately familiar experience, yet another retailer is announcing that it might’ve been the victim of a potential data breach: Sally Beauty confirms that it’s investigating “unusual activity” involving payment cards at some of its U.S. stores. This, a year after a breach that affected tens of thousands of customers.

  The company says it’s working with law enforcement and its credit-card processor as well as a third-party forensics expert to determine the scope of any potential breach, but there won’t be any numbers until the investigation is done, as “it is difficult to determine with certainty the scope or nature of any potential incident,” the company says in a statement.

  The company adds that it “will continue to work vigilantly to address any potential issues that may affect our customers.”

  Sally Beauty says concerned customers can call its customer service hotline at 1-866-234-9442, and that the company will provide updates as appropriate as the investigation continues.

  The company confirmed that this investigation is separate from last year’s incident, the Wall Street Journal reports, which reportedly hit about 25,000 customers — but may in fact have affected more than 280,000 credit card numbers, security researchers later said.

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist