Pirates beware

[bebbaboo]

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This is on MSNBC news this morning:

"LOS ANGELES - A trade group representing seven major movie studios filed a first wave of lawsuits against individuals they say are offering pirated copies of films using Internet-based peer-to-peer file-sharing programs.

As part of a larger effort to combat piracy, The Motion Picture Association of America also said it would soon make available a computer program that sniffs out movie and music files on a user’s computer as well as any installed file-sharing programs.

The MPAA announced the federal court suits Tuesday, but did not say how many defendants were sued or where the lawsuits were filed. The group also did not immediately make available a copy of the complaint.

One lawsuit, obtained by The Associated Press, targets 18 individuals and was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri in St. Louis.

Other lawsuits are believed to have been filed in New York, Philadelphia and other areas with large concentrations of high-speed Internet customers. Such connections are required to download the massive movie files.

The St. Louis lawsuit is brought against “John Doe” defendants, including four people who are allegedly in possession of one pirated film each. Some of the Internet addresses for the defendants can be traced to high-speed Internet connections made available by Charter Communications, a cable television company based in St. Louis.

Like similar lawsuits filed by the record industry against downloaders of music files, the studios say they will be able to identify the individual defendants at a later date.

Some of the pirated copies of films allegedly offered over Internet peer-to-peer networks include “Troy,” from Warner Bros., “Spider-Man 2,” from Columbia Pictures and “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen,” from The Walt Disney Co."

[Granite]

Sounds a lot like RIAA lawsuits against music pirates. Some folks are heavy-duty sharing movies, others are simple being made examples of. Honestly though, I think I might agree with these lawsuits. There are some decent pay-per-movie sites out there, as well as netflix and blockbuster for rentals. It's slightly different than the RIAA stuff, when those lawsuits were pre-itunes, with no good music services around.

(Note: I qualify itunes as a good business model because it laets you do whatever you want with music - keep it on you 'puter, burn it to CD...As I understand it, some pay-per movie sites are like this too)