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The MPAA, better known as the Motion Picture Association of America ( a conglomerate of Universal Studios, Disney, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros, MGM, 20th CenturyFox and Paramount ) have been having talks with the ultra high speed Internet2 consortium according to CNet News today.

The MPAA are hoping both to test next-generation video delivery projects and to monitor peer-to-peer piracy on the ultra high-speed network. Internet2 is essentially a vastly faster version of the Internet, “run by a consortium led by 207 universities working in partnership with industry and government to develop and deploy advanced network applications and technologies, accelerating the creation of tomorrow’s Internet.” (according to the i2 website).

One of the applications that i2 have been working on is the Digital Video Initiative who have been working on a new generation of digital video applications that take full advantage of the potential of high performance networks.

Not surprisingly, student file-swapping traffic has also has found its way onto the network, and in the light of lawsuits announced this week by the film body and a more vigorous anti file sharing stance, the MPAA are taking a serious look at the connotations superfast bandwidth brings for digital delivery, legal and illegal files. Using ordinary broadband connections, movies can take many hours to download, particularly if a network is congested. In tests earlier in the year researchers from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and Geneva-based CERN transferred data across nearly 11,000 kilometers at an average speed of 6.25 gigabits per second. The achieved speed is about 10,000 times faster than a typical home broadband connection according to CERN.

“We’ve been working with Internet2 for a while to explore ways we can take advantage of delivering content at these extremely high speeds, and basically manage illegitimate content distribution at the same time,” said Chris Russell, the MPAA’s vice president of Internet standards and technology in the CNet article.

The MPAA has been talking with the research consortium for several months, with an eye toward possibly joining the Internet2 group as a member, or simply opening up a collaborative relationship. At least one studio, Warner Bros., is already a member of the group, as is the Napster online music service.

In the light of recent lawsuits by both the RIAA and the MPAA, there has been some concern at the involvement of both entertainment bodies in the role of P2P police. Also in the last year, more than 20 schools have signed up for deeply discounted access to music services such as Napster, MusicNet and RealNetworks’ Rhapsody.

Internet2 is part of the Abilene network, a proving ground for high-bandwidth technologies. The cross-country backbone is 10 gigabits per second, with the goal of offering 100 megabits per second of connectivity between every Abilene connected desktop. Speaking to Tech Republic recently Steve Corbato, the director of backbone network infrastructure for Internet2 said “Abilene has become a necessity for research universities,” and, “It’s not just about building a really fast network. University members rely on it to collaborate with colleagues and students around the world.”

To put that into more perspective a very fast broadband connection from Comcast for example would be around 3.5 megabits per second, a mere fraction of the Abilene target.

One of the biggest groups of users on the Internet2 network is the supercharged student file sharing project, i2Hub. i2hub arose early this year as an on-campus alternative to older swapping services such as Kazaa, offering speeds that far outstripped its rivals.

To connect to this extremely fast network students need to download a free client from Direct Connect who’s website states, “Unlike other impersonal, server-driven file-sharing networks, Direct Connect offers a community-oriented, open, user-controlled network. Moreover, Direct Connect’s network architecture is built on a peer-to-peer foundation; users run, control, and maintain the network.”

Many colleges in the United States and Europe allow student communications to default to the Internet2 network, which connects universities at speeds much higher than the ordinary Internet can provide. The i2hub software takes advantage of this to let students at participating universities swap files using this bandwidth bonanza.

Related Reading

Hollywood Seeks Internet2 Tests [CNet News]
MPAA P2P File Share Weapon [P2PNet.net]
Internet2 Activities at Georgia Tech [Gatech.edu]
Internet2: File Swopping Heaven? [NewsFactor.com]
Internet2 at Stanford [Stanford.edu]
Colleges Shut Down the Network to P2P Users [Copyfutures]
the Internet2 Project [Cisco.com]
College P2P Use on the Decline? [ZDnet News]
Internet2:2004 and Beyond [Tech Republic]
Why the RIAA Targets College Students [Boycott-RIAA.com]

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.

Related Reading

Movie Studios Sue File Traders [Wired.com]
MPAA Touts Lawsuits, New P2P Fighting Software [ZDNet News]
Movie Studios Start Suing Web File Swappers [Reuters.com]
Film Industry Files Wave of Anti-Piracy Lawsuits [TechNewsWorld.com]
P2Pers Ask Supreme Court to Reject RIAA Ban Request [the Register]
Stealing Movies, Why the MPAA Can Afford to Relax [the Register]
New MPAA Boss a Comedian [P2PNet.net]
Exit Valenti [Lessig.org]
A Long Time Ago, in an Industry Far, Far Away [EFF Blogs]
Respect Copyrights [RespectCopyrights.org]
Federation Against Copyright Theft [FACT UK]

Two surveys emerged during the last week both making much light of the fact that movies have apparently over taken music as the most downloaded file of choice.

On Thursday the increasingly paranoid MPAA were drumming up several (sometimes) hysterical headlines in the press.
“Illegal Downloads Are Growing, Hollywood Says” (Information Week),
“Video, Software Downloads Overtake Music” (Biz Report)
“Online Piracy Dogs Movie Industry” (the Guardian)
“Movie Piracy Takes Off Worldwide” (ECommerce Times) and 100’s more.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) says its worst fears are coming true. People are illegally downloading more movies, and as a result they’re paying to view movies less frequently, according to a ‘worldwide’ study conducted by the MPAA and online research firm OTX.

The ‘World Wide Internet Piracy Study’(PDF), released Thursday, indicates that nearly a quarter of Internet users have downloaded unlicensed copies of films, and that half of those did so for the first time within the past year. It also found that more than one-fourth of downloaders are buying fewer films on DVD and videotape, and 17% say they’re attending fewer theater screenings.

The ‘worldwide’ study was infact data samples taken from eight countries, the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Japan, Australia, Italy, and Korea. Study participants were screened to be active moviegoers. With the help of OTX sample provider partners GoZing and Ciao, a total of 400 respondents were initially recruited in each country. This sample was augmented in several countries in order to provide a minimum sample of 100 movie downloaders per country.

Not everyone is convinced of the veracity of the findings. Jim Burger, an attorney with the Washington, D.C., law firm Dow Lohnes & Albertson, says the study lacks any empirical evidence.

“It is impossible to tell with any clarity that this is a valid study,” says Burger on Information Week
. “It’s interesting, but as far as I can tell, it may be picked out of the sky.” He says the MPAA is essentially making a connection between users saying they’re downloading more films and the fact that Hollywood saw a 3% drop in box office sales in 2003, when the two things may be unrelated.

Burger says the study’s findings could very well serve a political purpose as Congress considers the Inducing Infringement of Copyright Act of 2004, which would hold technology companies liable for enabling copyright infringements whether or not there is intent to do so.

The MPAA’s findings are backed by a seperate, second report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which says more movies were illegally downloaded last year than music tracks.The report to be published Monday says that across the OECD’s 30 industrialized member countries, music accounted for 48.6 percent of files shared online, compared with 62.5 percent in 2002, according to excerpts of the report seen by The Associated Press.

The OECD research, which was compiled with help from statistics from Big Champagne, a Los Angeles company that tracks digital downloads, says that illegal movie and TV downloads accounted for more than 34% of downloads over peer-to peer networks such as KaZaA, Limewire and Bearshare. The OECD report does not give separate numbers for pirated downloads and those that do not infringe copyright.

The study, which will be included in a larger technology report later this year, emphasizes that P2P technology should not just be equated with illegal downloading of music and movies. It is, the report said, a powerful technology that allows efficient distribution of legitimate files and data of all types.

“We see the technology as opportunity,” Wunsch-Vincent of the OECD said in ECommerce Times. Music and movie downloads “are only the start of how one could creatively exploit the idea of peer to peer networks.”

South Korea leads the world in the number of people who use broadband connections. Nearly 80% of the country’s residents have high-speed connections at home.

“Within two and a half years, we expect more than 70 per cent of our households will have Internet connections with access speeds of 20 megabits per second, which will allow them to download movies to watch on their high-definition TVs,” Chin Daeje, South Korea’s minister of information and communications said recently.

Its not by accident that countries with a higher reach of broadband access at home have more download activity. So that would make South Korea and Canada the ‘busiest’ file sharing countries in the world. So the OECD study claim that web surfers based in Italy, Belgium, France, Norway, Britain, Finland and Poland also downloaded a higher percentage of movies than those in the United States doesn’t make sense.

Poland has one of the smallest broadband reaches in Europe, the UK , despite government claims for a ‘wired Britain’ trails 20th in the world for broadband reach (only slightly ahead of Italy). The US. broadband reach is climbing towards 50% while in the UK only one in four has access to high speed internet.

Related Reading

Piracy Paranoia [the Fool]
Software Downloads Overtake Music [Yahoo! News]
Film Industry Needs an iMovies [Net Imperative]
Online Film Piracy Set to Rise [BBC News]
Respect Copyrights [RespectCopyrights.org]
Broadband Access in OECD Countries [OECD]
A Guide to Wireless Broadband for Public Sector Procurers UK (PDF) [Dept of Trade and Industry]
DSL Reports USA [DSLReports.com]
Broadband Use in the UK [ADSL Guide]
the Bandwidth Capital of the World [Wired]
US Broadband Dream is Alive in Korea [CNet-May 2003]