US film industry group wins piracy case
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A U.S. film industry group said it won damages Friday in a lawsuit against Chinese film pirates but said the ruling might mean little amid the huge scale of violations.
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Exaggerated case used to push legislation A 2005 study by the Motion Picture Association of America claimed that illegal downloads from college students accounted for an enormous 44 per cent of the industry's domestic losses.â¦
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The Motion Picture Association of America said Thursday that it will sue people who download movies from online file-sharing services. Reporter David McGuire discusses the likely impact of the lawsuits with Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge.
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Hollywood&#39;s major movie studios said Wednesday they won a lawsuit against a California company for operating a Web site that charged customers to download illegally copied movies.
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Damages of up to $30,000 (Â£16,300) per film are being sought by the Motion Picture Association of America in an unknown number of lawsuits filed against people caught illegally downloading digital copies of films.
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LOS ANGELES - Movie studios have expanded their fight against illegal downloading, suing more than 100 US and European-based computer services that transmit movie files across Internet file-sharing networks.
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Industry group will offer a free program to help users find and eliminate illegal files. The Motion Picture Association of America this week announced that it has begun filing lawsuits against people who use
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The US movie industry has launched legal action to sue people who facilitate illegal film downloading. The Motion Picture Association of America wants to stop people using the program BitTorrent to swap movies.
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The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has won a lawsuit against the operators of&#160;TorrentSpy.com, with the judge ruling in favor of the MPAA because the Web site operators tampered with evidence.In a ruling that could have implications for the privacy of Web site users, Judge Florence-Marie Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, ruled that TorrentSpy has infringed MPAA copyrights in a default judgment against the operators of the site.Cooper, in a ruling made public Monday, agreed with the MPAA that defendants Justin Bunnell, Forrest Parker, Wes Parker and Valence Media had destroyed evidence after another judge had ordered them to keep server logs, user IP (Internet Protocol) addresses and other information. TorrentSpy billed itself as a central location to find files distributed on BitTorrent P-to-P (peer-to-peer) networks.The defendants&#39; conduct was &quot;obstreperous,&quot; Cooper wrote in her decision. &quot;They have engaged in widespread and systematic efforts to destroy evidence and have provided false testimony under oath in a effort to hide evidence of such destruction,&quot; she wrote.TorrentSpy had located its servers in the Netherlands and argued that Dutch law protected them from having to turn over server logs and other information. In May, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Chooljian ruled that TorrentSpy must preserve server data logs held in random access memory, or RAM.That decision was widely criticized as being an unreasonable standard because information held in RAM is temporary, but Cooper, in her new ruling, said TorrentSpy destroyed or altered several types of evidence, including user IP addresses, discussion forum postings about the trading of movies and moderator identities. &quot;A substantial number of items of evidence have been destroyed,&quot; she wrote. &quot;Defendants were on notice that this information would be of importance in this case.&quot;TorrentSpy&#39;s lawyer Ira Rothken said his client had concerns about protecting users&#39; privacy. TorrentSpy will appeal Cooper&#39;s decision, he said.&quot;It&#39;s not a ruling on the merits of the case,&quot; he said. &quot;One person&#39;s willful destruction of evidence is another person&#39;s willful attempt to comply with customer privacy policies.&quot;The ruling, if it stands, could expose private information about Web site users in many civil lawsuits, Rothken added. &quot;This doesn&#39;t apply only to TorrentSpy, but to anyone who operates a Web site,&quot; he said.A ruling on damages in case will happen at a later date.The MPAA, which filed the case against TorrentSpy in February 2006, applauded Cooper&#39;s ruling. &quot;The court&#39;s decision ... sends a potent message to future defendants that this egregious behavior will not be tolerated by the judicial system,&quot; John Malcolm, the MPAA&#39;s executive vice president and director of worldwide antipiracy operations, said in a statement. &quot;The sole purpose of TorrentSpy and sites like it is to facilitate and promote the unlawful dissemination of copyrighted content. TorrentSpy is a one-stop shop for copyright infringement.&quot;
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(InfoWorld) - Industry groups for producers of copyrighted material, including the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and the Motion Picture Association (MPA), Friday signed an agreement with the National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC) for protection against Internet piracy in China. The Association of American Publishers (AAP) and The Publishers Association (TPA) of the U.K. also signed the memorandum, under which the industry groups will provide information about legal, authorized products distributed by their member companies in China. This allows the NCAC to distinguish between legal and pirated copy available online. Instances of Internet piracy will then be referred to the NCAC, which will then inform the proper legal authorities, the MPA said in a statement. The BSA estimated that total pirated software losses in 2005 in China were $3.9 billion, and that 86 percent of all software used in China during that year was pirated. The MPA estimated that the piracy rate for its members' products was 93 percent. Those numbers are calculated based on estimated sales if pirated or unauthorized products were not available. BSA members include major technology companies such as Apple Computer, Microsoft, and Dell. The MPA is comprised of Hollywood's largest film studios, such as Paramount Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It is the international arm of the Motion Picture Association of America. Â
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Industry groups for producers of copyrighted material, including the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and the Motion Picture Association (MPA), Friday signed an agreement with the National Copyright Administration of China (NCAC) for protection against Internet piracy in China.
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A film industry group has sued a high-end consumer electronics company, claiming its home theater jukebox system makes illegal copies of movie DVDs.
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Hollywood movie studios have settled a copyright lawsuit against a Web site operator they say had helped people find pirated copies of films for download.
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A federal appeals court on Thursday  delivered a stinging blow to the anti-piracy efforts of major  movie studios and music companies by ruling several Internet  file-sharing software companies are not liable for copyright  infringement.
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A federal appeals court on Thursday delivered a stinging blow to the anti-piracy efforts of major movie studios and music companies, ruling that several major online file-sharing software companies are not liable for copyright infringement.
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Another one bites the dust Another file-sharing software maker has been found guilty of causing copyright infringement. A US judge has said the Morpheus software produced by StreamCast breaks the law.â¦
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The MPAA estimated that global film piracy costs the US movie industry more than $3 billion annually, but it did not give an estimate for how much online piracy costs the industry.