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Movie Industry to sue File Sharers

Posted by samzenpus on from the juast-a-matter-of-time dept.

Wack Valenti writes "SiliconValley.com reports that the motion picture industry, taking a cue from the RIAA, is planning to file copyright infringement lawsuits against file sharers it says are illegally distributing movies online. The first suits could be filed as early as tomorrow."

8 of 572 comments (clear)

  1. Stargate Atlantis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I got a warning letter from my friends at MGM and bay TSP about illegally sharing my 2 episodes of stargate atlantis. I thought, hey, they are tv shows, and they arent on dvd... why would they care. Well, they did care, and they sent me a letter. And you know what? because of that letter, I havent used a p2p app since. I think that if they just focused on scaring people with letters, they would get the job done just as well, without looking evil like the RIAA

  2. conspiracy theorists rejoice by Anubis350 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    this comes right after bush gets re-elected.
    seriously though, it is kinda interesting that after a couple years of wait and see, they've suddenly decided to file these suits after bush (friend of corporations, etc) is firmly back in power

    mod me down as flame-bait if you want, I just find it an interesting point, not conspiracy but it makes sense; they waited until they knew the party that would support them was going to be in power for a while before they moved.

    --
    "goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
    1. Re:conspiracy theorists rejoice by Lord+Kano · · Score: 5, Interesting

      seriously though, it is kinda interesting that after a couple years of wait and see, they've suddenly decided to file these suits after bush (friend of corporations, etc) is firmly back in power

      Hollywood was solidly backing Kerry, maybe this is their temper tantrum because "their guy" didn't win.

      LK

      --
      "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
  3. Funny thing is.. by SocialEngineer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was told I was actually a target, by our dean of men here at my college. I have no idea why - I wasn't downloading or sharing any movies, nor could I even CONNECT to p2p networks because of the filtering systems in place (I use p2p to share security docs and my own music I have written). Yup. He said the MPAA had contacted the school and was prepared to sue if it was in necessary, or something like that. I guess I'll find out tomorrow if he was full of crap or not, won't I? :)

    --
    "Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
  4. USENET by Longtime+Lurker · · Score: 5, Interesting
    This has always made me wonder. Why are they targetting just p2p and not USENET? I know you can pull down a lot of files from USENET with the benefit of a centralized server so you don't have to wait for a ton of people to jump on to get your bandwidth capped.

    I always wondered why USENET is not targetted.

  5. Yawn... by Aaron+England · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Dear MPAA, My ipaddress is 199.2.120.89. My slashdot username is my real name. I download most of my movies off suprnova.org. Oh yea, and I'm not afraid.

  6. Re:what has the world come to by iamplasma · · Score: 5, Interesting
    They just want to steal more money from more people.

    Fill me in here in case I missed something, but how are the movie theaters stealing money from anyone? I mean, at least you can claim (however implausibly) that stealing music is okay because the companies make rediculous margins and rip off the artists. That doesn't even remotely apply to movie studios though, it's not like actors are underpaid (in fact, I understand they have a very strong union), and the amount they charge customers is far less relatively speaking. I mean, paying a few bucks to see a $200million movie isn't a bad deal.

    So to reiterate my question, how are the movie companies stealing your money?

  7. Takes one to know one... by petra13 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Ok, in all fairness I haven't verified whether or not this is true (feel free to correct me)- but supposedly the reason the movie industry established itself in California in the first place was because people who wanted to make movies were having patent issues with Thomas Edison. They went out west where enforcing patent law wasn't a big deal and screwed Edison out of a profit.

    So now the RIAA are going to go after people for violating copyright law and screwing them out of their profit. *Sigh* Not that it's the same people in charge now... but still. Anyone want to vote hypocritical bastards?