To fight illegal file-sharing, the movie industry is doing
everything short of filing lawsuits similar to those the Recording
Industry Association of America held against individuals who
allegedly downloaded copyrighted files.
“The movie industry hasn’t ruled anything out, but
right now we’re taking as many steps as possible to ensure
that (lawsuits don’t) need to be an option,” said
Matthew Grossman, director of digital strategy for the Motion
Picture Association of America.
One of these steps is watching the actions of the RIAA and
assessing the results.
“We hope that as people stop downloading music
they’ll stop downloading movies,” Grossman said.
The MPAA has shown its concern about illegal file-sharing by
creating educational programs about file-sharing and by working
with university administrators and information technology
officers.
UCLA is also working to prevent illegal exchange of copyrighted
material. Messages about file-sharing have been placed in various
publications, on the cable television network in the residence
halls and in the residence hall computer labs, said Kent Wada,
director of information technology policy at the Office of
Information Technology.
“We have certainly done more education than we ever have
before. … We want to balance the rights of the copyright holders
with the privacy of the UCLA community,” Wada said.
A year ago, universities and colleges saw concerted negative
pressure to stop file-sharing from Legislature members who saw
institutions of higher education and their high-speed Internet
connections as a major cause of illegal downloading. Within the
last few months, however, there has been a shifting sense that
file-sharing is not taking place just at colleges and universities,
Wada said.
Part of this viewpoint change may be because faster Internet
connection speeds are available in homes across the United States,
increasing the ability to download movies.
As a result, the movie industry is intensifying their efforts to
protect copyrights.
“It’s pretty clear that concerns are starting to
rise significantly,” said Jim Davis, associate vice
chancellor of the OIT.
UCLA has been looking at ways to rapidly process notifications
of copyright infringement and make the process more effective.
One way is dealing with the machine on which the copyrighted
material is located separately from the machine’s owner, who
would go through a judicial process.
As a result, the owner of the machine is no longer automatically
assumed to be the offender, as there have been cases in which
people unknowingly had illegal material on their machines because
their machines had been broken into.
“Then we can deal with the copyrighted material
effectively and still protect the individual’s rights for
privacy,” Davis said.
Despite such efforts made by colleges and universities, the MPAA
loses about $3.5 billion annually from hard goods piracy such as
illegal video tapes. This estimate does not include monetary losses
associated with illegal file-sharing because such numbers are
difficult to quantify.
Although these monetary losses will affect people working on
movies, Grossman believes the losses will ultimately affect
audiences the most.
“What will wind up happening is if there are fewer people
working on a film (and) fewer films being made, people will have
fewer movie choices and the options won’t look as good. The
things we’re accustomed to seeing on the big screen
won’t be there anymore,” he said.
Illegal file-sharing has not yet decimated the movie industry to
the extent it has affected the music industry, mainly because movie
files are much larger than music files, making them harder to
download, Grossman said.
The quality of the downloaded product may also explain why
illegal file-sharing has affected the music industry more than the
movie industry.
“(My roommates and I) take turns buying movies and pretty
much share them. … I don’t download movies because it
annoys me when a movie has really bad quality and I have to
struggle to know what something is in the movie,” said
third-year electrical engineering student Jonathan Harris.
The music industry alleviated the problem of illegal
file-sharing of copyrighted materials by implementing legal music
downloading applications such as Apple’s iTunes program.
The movie industry has created similar applications such as
CinemaNow and Movielink. These new types of technology enable
copyright holders to protect their movies, Grossman said.