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Hollywood Studios Invest $30 Million in Anti-Piracy Joint Venture

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on September 19, 2005 - 9:46am.
New York -- The six major Hollywood movie studios have formed a joint venture to develop new anti-piracy technologies, The New York Times reported on Monday. Motion Picture Laboratories (MovieLabs) will receive $30 million in financing over its first two years from the studios to develop various anti-piracy technologies not being addressed in the marketplace. Initiatives include developing a means of jamming camcorders smuggled into movie theaters; network management software to block movie-trading on campus and corporate computer networks; tools to detect illegal file-sharing on public networks; security for home networks; and technological methods of maintaining regional release windows worldwide. "Our highest priority is protecting the integrity of our product," Dan Glickman, chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), told The Times. The MPAA said it modeled its MovieLabs venture on the cable TV industry's CableLabs, which develops technologies cable TV providers needed and that consumer electronics firms were not addressing in the market.
tags: Anti-Piracy | Invest | Joint Venture | Hollywood Studios |

Hollywood Studios to Sue U.K. BitTorrent File-Sharing Site Operators

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on March 21, 2005 - 9:53am.
London -- Two U.K. residents are facing lawsuits from the Hollywood movie studios, which accuse them of operating websites that enabled copyright infringement of their films on the BitTorrent peer-to-peer file-sharing network. Last week, U.K. news site The Register reported that Alexander Hanff, owner of the site DVDR-core, received notice of a U.S. copyright infringement lawsuit filed against him by four studios. Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Universal and Warner Bros. have now also threatened to sue Kevin Reid, who operates the site bds-palace.co.uk, which the studios allege enables copyright infringement. The studios have reportedly offered settlements to both men, which they have both rejected in turn. UKITLaw.com attorney David Harris, who is representing both Hanff and Reid, maintains that neither operated a site that hosted any illegal content, and promptly removed any links on their sites to unlawful downloads on BitTorrent when made aware of them. "[The studios] can't bankrupt me. I don't own a house, so they can't take it. I own a few guitars that they can have and an old inkjet printer. It's a waste of their time and of my time." Hanff told The Register.
tags: U.K | Hollywood Studios | File-Sharing Site Operators |