Petteri Pyyny
17 Nov 2004 0:47
After years of waiting on the sidelines, the Movie Picture Association of America finally followed the RIAA's path and launched its full-blown attack against the American P2P users yesterday.
The organization that represents all major Hollywood movie studios declined to comment on how many individuals it had sued, but according to the reports at least 22 people have been sued in Denver and another 18 in St. Louis. Some reports suggest that also users in New York and Philadelphia were targeted. According to News24, at least four of the users sued in St. Louis were in possession of just one pirated movie each.
When asked about the scale of the attack, MPAA's director of worldwide anti-piracy operations, John Malcolm, said "It doesn't matter if it's 10 lawsuits or 500 lawsuits. The idea here is that there is no safe harbour."
So, it seems that movie studios have noticed how well the music industry's strategy of sueing your potential customers has worked and have decided to drag a couple of more teenagers to court. MPAA hasn't given any indication if it is prepared to settle the cases out of court or if it wants to go through the whole court process in order to set an example for other P2P users sharing movies.
Source: News24