IP Democracy: MPAA Targets News Groups in File-Sharing Lawsuits

The MPAA announced yesterday that it has filed another round of lawsuits in its efforts to stamp out unauthorized distribution of films on the web, and this time the MPAA is targeting companies that act as search engines but do not actually distribute films themselves. The sites targeted in the suits filed in federal courts around the country include newsgroup operations such as Torrentspy.com, IsoHunt, BTHub.com, TorrentBox.com, NiteShadow.com, Ed2k-It.com, NZB-Zone.com, BinNews.com and DVDRs.net.

What’s different about this round of litigation is that the sites are newsgroups or search engines that point to unauthorized films and this is the first time the MPAA has sought to shut down sites that enable users to find films on the web. In other words, MPAA isn’t making the distinction between sites that point to content and the sites that actually host the content.

“Website operators who abuse technology to facilitate infringements of copyrighted works by millions of people are not anonymous – they can and will be stopped,” said John G. Malcolm, Executive Vice President and Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA in a statement.

CNET’s John Borland points out that the Digital Millenium Copyright Act protects search engines from liability when users find pirated content using their technologies so long as the search engines owners aren’t aware of the links to pirated content and aren’t benefitting from the transaction. Borland also points out that the law is unsettled in this area, with no cases that have come to trial regarding search engine liability for linking to pirated content.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on February 24, 2006 7:16 AM to IP Democracy