MPAA suing bittorrent
 

Hollywood Sues Server Operators

December 15, 2004 12:39PM

The latest MPAA copyright infringement suits expand on a new U.S. film industry initiative that first targeted individual file-swappers. This time, the defendants are operators of servers supporting BitTorrent, the program of choice for online sharers of large files.

Hollywood movie studios on Tuesday sued scores of operators of computer servers that help relay digital movie files across online file-sharing networks.

The copyright infringement suits expand on a new U.S. film industry initiative whose first targets were individual file-swappers.

The defendants this time run servers that use BitTorrent, now the program of choice for online sharers of large files.

"Today's actions are aimed at individuals who deliberately set up and operate computer servers and Web sites that, by design, allow people to infringe copyrighted motion pictures," said John Malcolm, head of the Motion Picture Association of America's antipiracy unit.

Malcolm, speaking at Washington news conference, declined to name defendants. He said the suits, filed in the United States and Britain, targeted more than 100 operators.

"These people are parasites, leeching off the creativity of others," Malcolm added. "Their illegal conduct is brazen and blatant."

The suits target computer servers that index movies for BitTorrent users, but Malcolm said the MPAA is eyeing similar action against other servers as well.

Sites like BitTorrent steadily gained in popularity after the recording industry began cracking down last year on users of Kazaa Latest News about Kazaa, Morpheus, Grokster and other established file-sharing software.

The suits follow the same logic employed when the recording industry successfully sued the original Napster Latest News about Napster file-sharing network. The creators of that software used a central computer server to keep and update an index of what music files were being made available by computer users on the network.

Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, suggested Tuesday's lawsuits would backfire.

"By bringing these suits, the MPAA runs the risk of pushing the tens of millions of file sharers to more decentralized technologies that will be harder to police," von Lohmann said.

Another potential wrinkle is that many of the computer servers are offshore, outside the scope of U.S. copyright law.

Hollywood movie studios contend that the unauthorized trading of films online has the potential to threaten their industry, particularly as faster Internet access in homes makes the large movie files easier to download.

By comparison, music files are far smaller and swapped at greater volume.

Last month, the studios began suing computer users for swapping digitized films online for copyright infringement. The industry has also been a party to lawsuits against Kazaa, Morpheus and Grokster.

The industry has failed to persuade federal courts to shut down the services, and is awaiting a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.

http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?s ... =ecommerce

LOOOOOOOOOOOL


RIAA already tried that and failed.

how the fuck do u sue bit torrent?

Sue the guy who made it oOo:

someone needs to give them a hint, your not going to stop file sharing so just fucking move on already rolleyes:

Ok, so say they poor millions of dollars into a lawsuit to make it illegal to use the program BitTorrent. Then they poor millions more into realizing "oh shit we have to shut down the tracker" so they try to sue suprnova, which I am assuming is not owned by an american. So now you have all sorts of litigation problems.

Anyway, they do realize that by stating they will sue "bittorrent", they are only targeting one program out of dozens that run the peer-to-peer system known as Bit Torrent. You can't just sue Bit Torrent, it's not an entitiy, it's just a name for a way of peers to share files. You have to stop the use of every bit torrent program and shut down every tracker....

Listen folks this isn't anything new, oh and for the idiots that use suprnova, don't be surprised when you get a letter from the mpaa and your ISP stating they will take legal action if you do not cease your illegal downloading of movies. That's what you get for using a public tracker.

pm me a tracker your using biggrin:

[img]http://reichnation.com/uploads/ackbar-toast.jpg[/img]

IT'S A TRAP!

^ happy:

Ahahahah...ummm no

With my tracker I get unlimited download, sometimes as fast as 400KB/s. But it's a private tracker and the point is to keep it private. Oh and you couldn't join it anyway because it's part of being a member of a certain forum. This forum is getting rid of the torrents section and only members who have been part of the forum previously can join the new one that is being constructed off-site. But there are others out there, you just have to look.

Holly, you're so covert. Hold my hand? happy:

without warez, the internet would suck.

Without you, the internet would be great.