Hollywood movie studios, through the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), have today sued scores of operators of computer servers that help relay digitised movie files across online file-sharing networks.
The defendants run servers that use BitTorrent, the program of choice for online sharers of large files because of its (up until now) immunity to industry attempts to confound file-swappers with bogus decoy files.
John Malcolm at MPAA said,
"Today's actions are aimed at individuals who deliberately set up and operate computer servers and Web sites that, by design, allow people to infringe copyrighted motion pictures. The suits, filed in the United States and Britain, targeted more than 100 server operators.
These people are parasites, leeching off the creativity of others. Their illegal conduct is brazen and blatant.
The initial wave of lawsuits targets computer servers that index movies for BitTorrent users, but the MPAA is going to take similar action against servers that direct data for the DirectConnect and eDonkey file-swapping services."
The creator of BitTorrent, Bram Cohen, was not targeted in the suit.
"The target of our actions is not technology," Malcolm continued. "There are many legal Torrent sites that are dedicated to the distribution of public domain work and we are taking no action against them whatsoever."
Both eDonkey and BitTorrent steadily gained popularity after the recording industry began cracking down last year on users of Kazaa, Morpheus and other established file-sharing software.
UPDATE: Popular BitTorrent site SuprNova closes down
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