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Ohio residents have distributed the films ``Hitch,'' ``Mr. and
Mrs. Smith'' and ``Good Night and Good Luck,'' among others,
according to the lawsuits filed Thursday in U.S. District Court
by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., Warner Brothers
Entertainment Inc. and two subsidiaries of Sony
Pictures—Columbia Pictures Industries Inc. and Screen Gems Inc.
The four used BitComet, iMesh and Kazaa media sharing systems to
disseminate copyrighted movies without permission, the studios
claim in their simultaneous lawsuits.
The lawsuits are part of a bigger effort to reduce film piracy
which the industry says costs it $18 billion a year, Elizabeth
Kaltman, a spokeswoman with the Motion Pictures Association of
America, said Friday.
The association has filed hundreds of similar lawsuits on behalf
of studios around the country, part of an effort dating to the
end of 2004, Kaltman said. Many of the cases have been settled
by the defendants agreeing to pay movie companies a few thousand
dollars apiece.
Last month, Disney Enterprises Inc. sued a Texas man for
allegedly distributing illegal copies of ``House of Wax'' and
``Bambi.''
In March, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. sued a Missouri woman
over what the studio said was illegally distributed copies of
``Napoleon Dynamite'' and ``The Dukes of Hazzard.''
In 2006, an Indiana woman paid $6,000 in damages and $4,403 in
court costs to settle a lawsuit brought by Twentieth Century Fox
Film Corp. over the alleged illegal copying of ``Alien vs.
Predator'' and other films.
``We want to send a message to people that they're not anonymous
when they're on the Internet,'' Kaltman said. ``They are going
to be held responsible for the consequences of their action.''
The studios are also making their case through proposed
legislation and education, including pointing people to studio
Web sites where content is legally available for free, Kaltman
said.
The lawsuits are similar to the approach the music industry took
to stop the illegal downloading of music files. In the past few
years the industry sued more than 30,000 people for illegal
downloading, many of them college students using university
Internet services.
The movie studios have been somewhat more creative in their
approach to the problem, said Corynne McSherry, a staff attorney
with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based
nonprofit and online free-speech advocate.
But the film industry's lawsuits are still a big club to use
against individuals and aren't all that successful in addressing
the overall problem, McSherry said.
``It's thousands of people who are essentially being terrorized
and intimidated,'' she said. ``Paying lawyers a lot of money to
sue your potential customers is a really bad approach to growing
your business.''
Phone numbers could not be found for three of the four
individuals named in the lawsuits. A message was left with a
fourth, John Mitchell of suburban Columbus.
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. alleges Mitchell used iMesh to
distribute ``Mr. and Mrs. Smith'' on July 9, 2005, without
permission.
On the Net: Motion Picture Association of America:
http://mpaa.org/
Electronic Frontier Foundation:
http://www.eff.org |
