Friday, December 17, 2004

Hollywood Targets File Swapping Networks

The Motion Picture Association of America this week started an aggressive legal campaign against the eDonkey, BitTorrent, and DirectConnect file swapping services, filing suit against individuals operating servers for the peer-to-peer file swapping networks. the MPAA also said that it is sending cease-and-desist letters to Internet service providers who are hosting eDonkey and DirectConnect servers and hubs, which the group says are among the Internet's biggest copyright violaters. The legal action comes in the U.S., the U.K., Finland, France, and The Netherlands. According to the MPAA, the servers targeted have allowed online pirates to steal hundreds of millions of illegal copies of movies and TV programs. The suits are similar to the ones the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed against music file swappers. The MPAA claims that the film industry will lose more than $3.5B to movie piracy this year, not including losses from illegal online file sharing