James Delahunty
14 Oct 2005 16:44
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is hunting again, but this time not for file sharers or BitTorrent sites. This time the group, which represents major movies studios in the United States, is aiming to eradicate fake film download sites. The group announced it is taking legal action against six websites that appear to offer movie downloads for a subscription fee. When a consumer is lured into this scam, they find out immediately that they simply get redirected to P2P networks to download their movies illegally.
The MPAA filed the suits in New York states courts. "We won't tolerate this scam premised on the illegal swapping of valuable movie content," said the MPAA. The subscription fee's charged do vary, but an example of one offer is $20 for a three month trial or $40 for a lifetime membership. P2P networks are usually free to use. The MPAA said the sites make an attempt to look legitimate by using copyrighted images from top movies.
"These scam businesses charge customers for facilitating illegal downloads of movies, which could lure innocent consumers into becoming lawbreakers," commented MPAA chairman, Dan Glickman. The MPAA has in the past targeted BitTorrent sites which didn't actually offer pirated files at all, just torrent files which were then used by file sharers to download and share content with each other.
This is the first action the MPAA has taken since the Grokster ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. Dan Glickman said there are plenty of legal services online for movie downloads and these fake services and P2P networks are undermining their business.
Source:
BBC News