Hollywood's biggest movie studios are to sue people who share films through internet file-sharing networks.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) announced on Thursday that it will sue unnamed individuals for up to $30,000 each in damages, starting from 16 November.
"This was not an easy decision, but it must be done now before illegal online file-sharing of movies spins out of control," says Dan Glickman, head of the MPAA. "Illegal movie trafficking represents the greatest threat to the economic basis of movie-making in its 110-year history."
The MPAA, which represents the seven biggest film studios, also plans an advertising campaign to highlight their legal action.
File-sharing networks connect internet users so that they can search one another's hard drives for files and download them. The first networks, including Napster, were used to share MP3 music files. But the proliferation of broadband internet connections has made it possible to trade much larger files, such as entire movies.
Following suit
The announcement follows similar action from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Since September 2003, the RIAA has sued more than 6000 file-sharers accused of illegally trading copyrighted music.
Record companies claim these cases have helped reduce illegal file-trading, but there is conflicting evidence about the current state of sharing networks. Some measures suggest that sharing is indeed declining.
However, BayTSP, a Californian company specialising in monitoring file-sharing networks, reports that sharing has not decreased, although the number of individual movie and music files has dropped.
But some files-sharing networks are also suffering from an excess of fake files. These are usually uploaded by the entertainment industry, to frustrate those looking for copyrighted material, or by advertisers looking for a new audience.
"The network used by Kazaa and Grokster has been so inundated with spoofed files that any statistics on the number of legitimate users, files or download activity should be taken with a grain of salt," a spokesman for BayTSP told New Scientist.
But there is also evidence that some file-sharers have switched to newer, less well-known networks that have fewer fake files.
"Record profits"
Some campaign groups have hit out at what they perceive to be the bullying tactics of the MPAA.
"These lawsuits are misguided," says Wendy Seltzer of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The music industry experience shows that the lawsuits don't reduce the amount of file sharing. And it's certainly not good PR to sue movie fans for non-commercial sharing when the studios are rolling in record profits."
There is also evidence that the industry itself is partly responsible for illegal sharing. A study published by researchers at AT&T Laboratories and the University of Pennsylvania in September 2003 showed that most pirated movies circulating in file-sharing networks came from industry leaks, rather than home or cinema copying.
The researchers developed software to track popular movies that had been uploaded to file-sharing networks. They examined each version of a film and found the majority came from pre-release or reviewer copies.