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Reuters News Article
Hollywood fights illegal downloads by targeting servers
Tue Dec 14, 2004 08:29 AM ET
By Jesse Hiestand
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Hollywood's major studios intend to
escalate their battle against illegal movie downloading by targeting the
popular BitTorrent network and those who operate its servers, the movie
industry's lobbying arm is set to announce.
The civil suits against server operators marks the next step in the Motion
Picture Assn. of America's (MPAA) anti-piracy campaign, which started last
month with lawsuits against individuals who shared movies on peer-to-peer
services.
In addition to civil lawsuits filed in the United States, a news
conference at the MPAA's offices in Washington on Tuesday also will detail
how international law enforcement has aided these anti-piracy efforts.
Further details of the event were not available.
MPAA president and CEO Dan Glickman is set to make the announcement along
with Travis Kalanick, CEO of Red Swoosh, which develops private P2P
networks, and Mark Ishikawa, CEO of BayTSP, which offers file-branding and
-tracking applications.
BitTorrent can rapidly transfer large files among many people, leading to
interest among legitimate users who recognize the technology's efficiency
and speed.
While it is among the fastest-growing P2P networks, BitTorrent is
different from its predecessors in several respects. Unlike other networks,
where users can search for a file, BitTorrent users must go to a Web site
to get a "torrent file" and connect to a server to find other users who
have the file. The network relies on these "tracker" servers to manage
users' downloads by knowing who has the file and connecting users for
uploading and downloading.
Because downloaders swap portions of a file with one another, the
file-trading functions like a collective swarm rather than a series of
individual connections to a single server.
Sources say the MPAA is not necessarily going after BitTorrent's
developer, Bram Cohen, only the server operators.
The major motion picture studios filed their first round of civil lawsuits
in mid-November, initially targeting about 200 people who allegedly made
movies available on P2P services. The record industry, through the RIAA,
pioneered this practice and has now filed about 7,000 civil cases, most of
which have been settled for a few thousand dollars.
The MPAA estimates that the studios lose about $3.5 billion annually to
physical piracy like bootlegged DVDs but does not have a ready figure for
Internet-related losses.
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R. A. Hettinga