Buzzsonic.com

November 16th, 2004

Little over a week ago rumours were circulating that the MPAA, which consists of seven Hollywood studios, were preparing lawsuits against file sharers of movies, in an action. Then ‘the Register’ claimed their source said that the MPAA were readying to file ‘John Doe’ suits against over 200 people seeking damages up to $150,000 for each movie placed online.

Today the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed the first wave of legal actions against individuals they say are offering pirated copies of films using Internet based peer-to-peer file sharing programs. The film body also said it would soon make available a computer program that sniffs out movie and music files on a users computer as well as any installed file-sharing programs which would be available from their Respect Copyrights website, newly established to educate consumers about copyrights.

The trade group said it would also join with the Video Software Dealers Association to place educational materials in more than 10,000 video stores nationwide. Jason Schultz, an attorney at Electronic Frontier Foundation said the MPAA messages seem contradictory: “They are placing these in locations where people are paying money for movies. They are sending the messages to people who are buying their products.”

MPAA Chief Executive Officer Dan Glickman said in a statement. “The motion-picture industry must pursue legal proceedings against people who are stealing our movies on the Internet. The future of our industry, and of the hundreds of thousands of jobs it supports, must be protected from this kind of outright theft using all available means.”

In an earlier interview with USA Today (Nov 5) Glickman commented, ” We believe we’re losing $3.5 billion yearly. Someone sneaks into a theater with a camcorder, films a movie, puts it online for the world to see for free, and it gets duplicated into DVDs that are getting sold on street corners from New York and Los Angeles to China. If this is allowed to continue, it will sink our industry.”
In the same article it was pointed out by journalist Jefferson Graham that 2003’s box office figures were $9.5 billion, the second biggest in history.