"Illegal movie trafficking represents the greatest threat to the economic basis of movie-making in its 110-year history," declared MPAA President and CEO Dan Glickman. "People who have been stealing our movies believe they are anonymous on the internet, and wouldn't be held responsible for their actions. They are wrong. We know who they are, and we will go after them, as these suits will prove."
File-sharing, where users distribute and download copyrighted works over P2P services such as Kazaa, is most commonly associated with music, where the growth in swapping digital music files has been blamed by the industry for falling sales and a consequent fall in revenue.
As yet the file-sharing of movies has not taken off so dramatically – probably because of the enormous file-size and time needed to download even a poor quality film – but the industry is aware that as technology advances, the file-sharing of its products will increase.
"We all know that digital distribution is the wave of the future, and the studios have all supported legal download services in various ways," Glickman said. "But we cannot allow illegal trafficking to derail legitimate new technologies that provide consumers with affordable, convenient access to high-quality movies on the web. Trading a digital file of a movie on-line without paying its owners is no different than walking into a store and shoplifting a DVD."
According to the MPAA, from 16th November its member companies will begin to file lawsuits against individual file-swappers across the country. These civil suits will seek damages, which may be as much as $30,000 for each separate motion picture illegally copied or distributed by an individual over the internet, and as much as $150,000 per motion picture if such infringement is proven to be wilful.
The suits will also ask for injunctions against the individuals concerned.
"Filing suit against movie thieves is our latest step in a wide-ranging, multi-pronged anti-piracy effort, but far from our first," Glickman said. "But file-swapping is a viral threat that we must bring under control now. File traders must realise that bad things happen when you steal copyrighted material. These lawsuits are just one of those bad things."