MPAA launches legal offensive against online pirates

Movie pirates were warned Thursday that they are under surveillance as potential targets of copyright infringement lawsuits that the MPAA will begin filing Nov. 16.

The campaign has been quietly under way for months and will tentatively involve about 250 cases filed in courts around the United States.

The potential defendants are people who allow dozens if not hundreds of movies to be uploaded from their computers onto such peer-to-peer file-trading networks as Kazaa and eDonkey. Warner Bros., Sony Corp., the Walt Disney Co. and the other MPAA members hope to head off the problem before it gets out of hand, as happened with the record labels.

"If we don't act now, the consequences will be devastating to the entire film industry," MPAA president and CEO Dan Glickman told reporters at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. "This is about protecting some things that all Americans hold dear: consumer choice, artistic creativity and economic growth. They cannot happen if the creators' ability to come up with these works of art is impinged by the fact that they are being distributed for free around the world."

Read the article: www.hollywoodreporter.com