Napster and Hollywood: Controlling Intellectual Property in an Age of Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and Digital Video Recorders
Mondaq Business Briefing › United States Law Articles in English (2002)
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Napster and Hollywood: Controlling Intellectual Property in an Age of Peer-to-Peer File Sharing and Digital Video Recorders
by Mark F. Radcliffe and Jill Sazama
©2002Summary: The Internet poses significant challenges of piracy to the movie and television industry. Napster has provided a preview of the problems awaiting these industries as broadband becomes more available. To avoid these problems, the industries need to adopt coordinated strategies of public relations, enforcement of existing laws, changes to the law and technological protection working with the consumer electronics manufacturers. The increasing availability of broadband access to the Internet means that Hollywood now faces online piracy risks similar to those faced by the music industry. Broadband through satellite, DSL or cable modem significantly increases the risk of unauthorized distribution of movies and television programs since the size of digital files of movies and television programs are too large to effectively download through dialup connections. These industries have begun to see the risks which they will face in the future: digital versions of movies are available soon after their release and are traded on some of the existing peer to peer networks. Yet the size of these file has limited the practical risk of widespread piracy. Nonetheless, a new compression technology (like MP3 was for musical works) or the increasing availability of broadband will remove this practical constraint. The movie industry has already fought several companies that made movies available for $1 over the Internet, Movie88.com and Film88.com. Both sites were ultimately shut down by the Motion Picture Association, the international arm of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) (the industry organization that represents the major U.S. motion picture companies, including Sony, Twentieth Century Fox and Universal).1 Both sites were based in other countries: Movie88.com was in Taiwan, and Film88.com in Iran, but the MPA was able to pressure their ISPs (in the case of Movie88.com the Taiwanese government also intervened) who cooperated in shutting down the sites. The television industry has been able to shut down several sites that broadcast...See the full content of this document
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