December 15, 2004 — (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — According to reports release on Tuesday Hollywood movies studios sued numerous operators of computer servers that help transfer digital movie files across online file-sharing networks. The copyright infringement suits expand on a new US film industry initiative whose first targets were individual file-swappers. The defendants this time run servers that use BitTorrent, now the program of choice for online sharers of large files, which includes more than 100 server operators.
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“Today’s actions are aimed at individuals who deliberately set up and operate computer servers and Web sites that, by design, allow people to infringe copyrighted motion pictures,” says John Malcolm, head of the Motion Picture Association of America’s antipiracy unit. “These people are parasites, leeching off the creativity of others. Their illegal conduct is brazen and blatant.”
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The suits target computer servers that index movies for BitTorrent users, but Malcolm said the MPAA is also looking to target other servers as well. Services like BitTorrent gained popularity after the recording industry last year began targeting users of file-sharing software like Kazaa, Morpheus and Grokster.
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The suits follows the same logic employed when the recording industry successfully sued the original Napster file-sharing network. Napster programmers used a central computer server to keep and update an index of what music files were available by computer users on the network.
