Blame the bandwidth

July 28, 2002

Type: discussion

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<div>Is it a bandwidth issue?</div>
<div>Is it censorship?</div>
<div>Is is protecting copyrights?</div>
<div>Is it a way to wipe out competition?</div>
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<div><font color="#000000"> </font></div>
<div><font
color="#000000"
>——————————————————————–<span
></span>—-<x-tab>       
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<font size="+1"><b>Entertainment - E! Online
Industry</b></font></font></div>
<div><font size="+2" color="#000000"><b>Studios Waging Web
War</b></font><font color="#000000"><br>
</font><font size="-3" color="#999999">Sat Jul 27, 4:00 PM
ET</font><font color="#000000"><br>
<br>
<font size="-1"><i>By Josh Grossberg</i></font></font><br>
<font color="#000000"></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">Forget peer-to-peer.  Cease and desist
may become the phrase to describe online file sharing.</font><br>
<font color="#000000"></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">Mirroring the recording industry's efforts
against illegal online music swapping, the Motion Picture Association
of America has declared war on the increasing number of pirates who
engage in</font><font color="#0000FF"><u> illegal movie and video
trading</u></font><font color="#000000">.<br>
<br>
The MPAA–the organization that represents the studios–has developed
special software to search the Web and file-sharing networks and
identify copyrighted movies. So far, the MPAA has issued more than
100,000 legal notices to Internet service providers ordering them to
take "immediate action" against Netizens unlawfully
downloading films.<br>
<br>
As a result, ISPs not wanting to be on the business end of an MPAA
lawsuit have either forced users to halt downloading big files or, in
many cases, have cut off offenders' access altogether.  MPAA
chief Jack Valenti says the crackdown was justified.<br>
<br>
"According to Viant, a Boston-based consulting film, some 400,000
to 600,000 films are illegally downloaded every day. The
protection of creative works in the digital environment is an issue of
great importance, not solely to Hollywood, but to consumers who desire
online movies at a fair and reasonable price," Valenti tells E!
Online.  "We are anxious to provide such services but it is
imperative that some basic security exists to provide protection for
high valuable digital works in the online environment."<br>
<br>
Larger than the average MP3 song file, movie files tend to average
more than 600 megabytes and take at least eight hours to download–a
weakness the MPAA and studios hope to exploit.<br>
<br>
For instance, AOL Time Warner–whose subsidiaries include the Warner
Bros. studio and Warner Music Group–is clamping down on movie piracy
through its AOL Time Warner Cable, which provides high-speed broadband
access. The cable division has begun identifying and blocking those
users on its service who transfer huge amounts of data.<br>
<br>
Of course, the losers in this whole gambit may be those people trading
large digital files of their own creations and not pirating the latest
copy of<i> The Matrix</i> or<i> A.I.</i>.<br>
<br>
But that hardly seems to bother Time Warner, whose reps claim the
company adopted the plan to halt the hogging of bandwidth , and not
necessarily to crack down on pirating.<br>
<br>
"We are not blocking the use of any applications or access to any
Websites," Mark Harrad, a spokesman for Time Warner Cable,
explains to the Associated Press. "But we are doing various
things to manage bandwidth better and to interfere with people who are
in violation of [their] service agreements."<br>
<br>
There have been some casualties in the early goings, however.<br>
<br>
</font><font color="#0000FF"><u>InternetMovies.com</u></font><font
color="#000000">, a movie news Website based in Hawaii, is suing the
MPAA after it was forced to temporarily shut down after receiving
legal threats accusing it of digital piracy.<br>
<br>
"All of us at InternetMovies.com are sorry, MPAA, that you are
going through hard times with movie piracy on the Internet, but
harassing this Website does not make you any better. We talk about
good things too, like ways to solve your problems and non-infringing
movie sites," the site's publisher writes on its home page.<br>
<br>
Meanwhile, the recording and film industries are also taking their
fight to Congress.<br>
<br>
This week, Representative Howard Berman introduced a bill that would
give entertainment companies the ability to fight online pirates with
an array of high-tech weapons, including fake files, blocking software
and programs that can search and delete copyrighted material on a
downloader's hard drive. (The California Democrat is the House's
single largest recipient of political donations from the entertainment
industry, according to the Associated Press.)</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br>
A similar beat-pirates-at-their-own-game strategy was used by
Universal's Interscope Records last month. Worried about a
proliferation of bootlegged copies of</font><font color="#0000FF"><u>
Eminem</u></font><font color="#000000">'s new album,</font><font
color="#0000FF"><i> The Eminem Show</i></font><font color="#000000">,
the label flooded music-swapping sites with song files that contained
incomplete tracks. It became difficult for online traders to tell the
differences between the bogus files and the real deal.<br>
<br>
Such tactics will also help battle overseas' pirates, who have an
easier time escaping U.S. and international copyright police.<br>
<br>
For now, however, the low-tech approach seems to be working for the
MPAA. According to Ken Jacobsen, the group's senior vice president of
worldwide antipiracy, most users have complied with the
cease-and-desist letters, and almost all ISPs have cooperated in the
investigation, not only because they fear the wrath of the MPAA's
cadre of attorneys, but they also want users to stop hogging
bandwidth.<br>
<br>
But Jacobsen acknowledges that if the MPAA and movie studios don't act
quickly to get a handle on the piracy problem now, it could spiral out
of their control to the point where billions in revenue off their
copyright works could be lost. </font><br>
<font color="#000000"></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">"Our industry," he tells the
Associated Press, "could be damaged as much as the music
industry."<br>
</font></div>
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