Yvonne Braithwaite-Burke doesn't trust you to pay your Metro fare; NPR reports on moves to make Metro's honor system history. Is the city of LA feeling the writers' strike in its wallet? Today reps from the WGA and SAG will talk with LA economist Jack Kyser and the City Council Housing, Community and Economic Development Committe about the economics of the strike. (The MPAA has been invited, but hasn't RSVP'd yet). A lil' shake......

Close, but not close enough: a 3.9 earthquake hit Baja California today at 1:50 p.m. Now that we think of it, getting yourself prepared for a major earthquake is a great New Year's resolution! Those rodes are slick, stay safe! This morning's crash on the 5 near the 170 left one dead and three others injured. Who loves the politics of hair? Pam Spaulding at Pandagon writes that Essense Magazine's Top Ten Celeb Hair......

Who made this weekend festival weekend? There are about a million different events going on around the city this weekend, so enjoy the fall weather and get out there! One strike against pirated movies: the MPAA is filing a lawsuit against internet video sharing sites cinematube.net and ssupload.com, claiming that these sites infringe upon the MPAA's copyright. Kiefer Sutherland could be facing up to 18 months of jail time for his drunk-driving arrest. Next......

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is pissed about the "hundreds of billions" of dollars swallowed by piracy and counterfeiting and it has taken the outrage to our fair City of Angels ("...and Demons," as the press release says). The Chamber has released results of a Gallup survey, coinciding with this week's Counterfeiting and Piracy Awareness shenanigans claiming that one-quarter of all Angelenos are admitted pirates. But we're certain that percentage is far greater. In fact,......

We're not sure how you say bullshit in French, but there's a "controversial" film slated to screen at Cannes this week that should be called Red Flag. American indie film Last Looks has supposedly been blocked from entering France because it allegedly contains scenes of real deaths that occurred during the production. AP jumped on the "controversy," and even Film Threat bit, but the whole thing walks, talks and smells like a big fat fake.......

A Word or 36: 60 Minutes was interesting what with alleged ratfink George Tenet telling us all the things he should have been telling us years ago, when it would have mattered, when we could have done something about it. Tonight - Monday - April 30th, 2007 D'backs @ Dodgers (PRIME, 7:00 p.m.) How I Met Your Mother/The New Adventures of Old Christine/Two and a Half Men/The King of Queens (CBS, 8-10:00 p.m.) Two......

After yesterday's announcement of the death of former MPAA president and LBJ presidential aide Jack Valenti, we thought Freakazoid's tribute to Valenti might be a nice way to rememberthe man.......

Jack Valenti dies. Does this mean the end of those annoying 'downloading movies is like stealing your grandmother's purse' previews before every dvd ever made? - Bloomberg Eve crashes her gold Maserati on Hollywood Blvd. - TMZ Sexual battery charge filed in Los Angeles against ’Girls Gone Wild’ founder Joe Francis. Look out for 'Some Dude Goes Wild on Joe Francis' on dvd, real soon. - Boston Herald Dad who was released from prison......

Welcome to the LAist weekly tech news roundup. Each week I'll be bringing you the latest, and hopefully most interesting, technology news from around the city, the state, the country and maybe even the world. Also, if you have any news, tips or things of interest you want to point out, feel free to drop me a line at: themacist [at] gmail dot com. Now, let's get to the news: Microsoft was ordered by......

This is your last warning. Don't go posting those Oscar screeners on the Internet. Not now, and not ever! After all, you could end up like Salvador Nunez Jr., a 27-year-old Norwalk resident who was charged today with copyright infringement. Nunez allegedly got DVD copies of Flushed Away from his sister, who has the privilege of reviewing cartoons for the Academy. The MPAA knows this because they imprint digital watermarks on all screeners in......

Recommended This Film Is Not Yet Rated - Keep the violence cartoonish and the sex missionary -- that seems to be the guiding principle of America's self-appointed film censors, the MPAA. In this fascinating look into the heart of a corrupt, shadowy and increasingly out-of-touch organization director Kirby Dick deftly exposes the MPAA's rank hypocrisy vis à vis depictions of homosexuality, female pleasure, "abnormal" sexuality and violent content. Dick employees a detective to stake......

The modern day saints in the movie industry have somehow convinced Los Angeles Boy Scouts that the virtues of copyrights are on par with first aid and citizenship. So, yes, modern day LA Scouts can get a merit badge for showing that they demonstrate an understanding of digital law. Take that, knots! Scouts will be instructed in the basics of copyright law and learn how to identify five types of copyrighted works and three......

If you’ve ever wondered why most sex scenes in mainstream American movies suck (and not in the good way), then this movie is for you. This Film Is Not Yet Rated is a surprisingly good documentary that unearths the shadowy mechanisms of the MPAA’s “voluntary” movie rating system. This film is very smartly directed by Kirby Dick and cleverly edited by Matthew Clarke, fastidiously untangling the collusion between movie studios and the government to......

This week a memo was leaked, or found, or stolen from South Park co-creator Matt Stone to the MPAA (the people who hand out the ratings for movies). The film in question was South Park: The Movie. There are always tales about filmmakers arguing with the MPAA and the studios about what to cut so as to get a tamer rating, and therefore increase the chances of a bigger box office because the lower......

Director Atom Egoyan will have a hard time selling his new film Where The Truth Lies. The MPAA slapped a rare NC-17 rating on the flick for explicit sexual scenes between the three costars: Kevin Bacon, Colin Firth and Rachel Blanchard. The movie also stars Alison Lohman. The film's distributor must now decide whether or not to release it as NC-17 or tag it as "unrated." Why all the fuss? Well, the NC-17 rating......

Hollywood studios filed a new batch of lawsuits against file swappers on Thursday mostly targeting those who frequently use Bittorrent technology. And, for the first time, the studio's lawsuits used the peer-to-peer file sharing companies' own data to track down individuals accused of trading movies online. The Motion Picture Association of America said it filed 286 lawsuits against people around the United States based on information acquired from file-trading sites shut down earlier in......

Over at BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow showcases some really sharp reasons why Hollywood is dying. The most important part of all this is that piracy of movies isn't mentioned at all. Although, the MPAA would have us believe that piracy is the holy grail of a slumping box office. We hear this kind of thing all the time and people always have one opinion or another. Some of them are informed and insightful. Others, less......

It used to be "You can click but you can't hide" but now the MPAA is going even further. While it might be small potatoes compared to the $4.8 million police were granted to get you to buckle up, the MPAA has given $186 grand for surveillance cameras to be placed in LA's downtown Fashion district -- the "hotbed of hard copy movie piracy" according to Daily Variety. C|Net suggests that the cameras are......

Movie theaters are starting to make LAist feel really, really guilty. First, the MPAA started running their own "Respect Copyright" advertisements, hosted by set painters, stuntmen and the jelly-bean dish refillers at craft service tables. Fortunately, people fought back. What followed was a call to arms against the MPAA's "Respect Copyright" in-theater commercials by a myriad of Internet sites, including our friends over at Defamer. But just as stuntman Manny Perry has faded into......