SMAIS, the Icelandic branch of the Motion Picture Association, has filed for bankruptcy. According to TorrentFreak, the anti-piracy organization was forced to file for bankruptcy after its board of directors revealed that it had suffered from mismanagement and embezzlement.

Only a few hours after it was revealed that cloud-based file-sharing destination Hotfile has agreed to pay $80 million to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) as part of a settlement for a trial set to begin next week, the site went offline. Not only did the site go offline, but it took all of the user content being stored on its servers with it. Users who stored legal personal and business-related documents are now left in much the same situation that Megaupload users were left in, but this time it can't be blamed on anyone except the service provider.

Update: Hotfile has settled the case out of court and has accepted an $80 million judgment, according to Ars Technica.  Hotfile has agreed to pay $80 million and to stop operating "unless it employs copyright filtering technologies that prevent infringement," according to a press release issued by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

According to this TorrentFreak article, the trade groups representing the music and movie industry are indoctrinating kindergartners in the state of California with an "educational program" about "sharing creative works." The Center for Copyright Information, a partnership between the MPAA, RIAA and five of the largest Internet providers in the United States, are teaching copyright classes in California public schools.

It's June and that means that the Digital Media Association (DiMA), Entertainment Merchants Association (EMA), National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM), and National Association of Theatre Owners have banded together once again to declare June to be "Entertainment Ratings and Labeling Awareness Month."

The Washington Times (thanks to PHX Corp for pointing this out) notes that the President is not looking for more regulations on video games and movies (through research announced today through the CDC), but wants the respective industries to provide parents with more tools so they can make more informed decisions about the content their children are consuming.

Last week we wrote a story about how the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) had named Stroz Friedberg to be its "impartial and independent technology expert" to review claims of copyright infringement as part of the new "Six Strikes" enforcement rules. The "Six Strikes" system was agreed upon by the MPAA, RIAA, and five major ISPs but one of the core tenets was that it would have an independent body to investigate the validity of claims of copyright infringement against file-sharers.

Next month the "Six Strikes" system to deal with online piracy and illegal file-sharing will be fully operational in the United States. The new rules - mutually agreed on by several major ISP's and trade groups representing intellectual property holders (the RIAA, and the MPAA) required that copyright infringement claims be investigated by an external company. This was one of the sticking points for ISPs and rightsholders seemed to happily comply.

This week former Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd, who is now chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) tried to emphasize that the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act are dead, buried and never to be pushed by his group in Congress again.

"My own view, that legislation is gone. It’s over. It’s not coming back," Dodd told Wired in an interview earlier this week.

He still insisted that the cause of these bills' defeat were due to online petitions and e-mail campaigns that he called "over the top."

On Monday we reported that the MPAA and the RIAA recommended to Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel that the United States government do more to combat online piracy like they did with Megaupload. Today Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom offers his two cents on the MPAA's and RIAA's recommendations and goes so far as to say that these trade groups have "corrupted the government."

Google has decided to play ball with rights holders, according to this Politico report. The world's biggest search engine revealed that it will now make search results from sites with "frequent copyright removal notices" appear lower in Google search rankings. Google announced late Friday that web sites with high numbers of "valid" removal notices would be affected by this new policy.

When the Obama Administration's Copyright Czar Victoria Espinel sent out a request for comments on future strategies related to copyright enforcement, it came as no shock when trade groups representing the interests of the movie and music industry asked that a major P2P site be taken down.

President Barack Obama yesterday urged members of the U.S. Senate to pass the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 and encouraged representatives of Congress to draft and pass a similar bill quickly, saying:

Movie industry trade organization the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has hired a former Nintendo lawyer to head up its efforts to combat piracy. The group is also responsible for movie ratings. The MPAA announced on Monday that it hired Marc Miller to take control of its international anti-piracy enforcement operations.

He will serve as the senior vice president of Internet content protection and will work closely with the group’s army of lawyers to develop a refined civil and criminal litigation strategy to fight against copyright infringement.