Hollywood gets tough on copying: 'Takedown' letter campaign targets movie swappers

July 12 — Keith Tyler signed up for broadband Internet access three weeks ago, and did what many high-speed Net users do — he started swapping music and movies. But within days, the movie industry and his ISP tracked him down and told him to stop offering movies for download, or else. Such threats are now the weapon of choice for the Motion Picture Association of America, which says it’s slinging some 2,000 complaints a week toward alleged movie pirates.

IT’S CALLED A “takedown” notice, and it comes with the eerie feeling of having been caught with your hand in the cookie jar — by a lawyer. The letters are flying fast and furious now, as the movie industry tries to pre-empt a Napster-sized outbreak of free content swapping.

“Dear Customer,” a typical letter from one ISP, Cox Communications, says, “We have received a notification that you are using your Cox High Speed Internet service to post or transmit material that infringes the copyrights of a complainant’s members. ... Cox will suspend your account and disable your connection to the Internet within 24 hours of your receipt of this e-mail if the offending material is not removed.”

The letter then goes on to site the offending content. In Tyler’s case, it was three or four episodes of “The Simpsons” and part of Kevin Costner’s new movie “Windtalkers.” A bit shocked by the notice, he quickly removed the content.

“I had high speed Internet access for just three weeks, it had not even been that long,” said the 24-year-old Tyler, an information technology specialist from Phoenix, Ariz. “It was just a couple of movies.” He had made them available for download on the Gnutella network.

Tyler said he replied immediately to Cox saying he had deleted the files. “They wrote back and said that should be good enough.”

Tyler was nabbed by an automated program developed by Ranger Online Inc. The software cruises file-swapping networks like Gnutella to find copyrighted materials, hunts down the IP address of the poster, then discovers which Internet service provider is being used. Soon after, the MPAA sends its form letter to the ISP. Under the Digital Copyright Millennium Act, Internet providers are compelled to stop distribution of copywritten materials when they are notified, so the ISP in turn forwards the note to the user, along with a threat of disconnection. Expect more threats as time goes by — in 2001, 54,000 letters went out. The rate has now doubled, with 50,534 takedown notices sent by June 30 of this year, keeping Internet service providers very busy chasing down copyright complaints.

“We are continuing to fine-tune the system,” said Ken Jacobsen, senior vice president and director of worldwide antipiracy efforts at MPAA. While the firm began sending takedown notices in late 2000, efforts continue to ramp up, to keep pace with increased movie swapping online.

So far, the MPAA seems to be using a slightly lighter hand than the Recording Industry Association of America. Along with the calamitous battle with Napster, followed by litigation against current file-swapping services KaZaa and Morpheus, the music industry has been behind several high-profile arrests of individuals involved in the online music trade. And just last week, The Wall Street Journal reported the industry is planning to step up such individual prosecutions.

While Jacobsen says such drastic law enforcement measures would be appropriate in “extreme situations,” he says the movie industry is really hoping to have relatively civil exchanges with transgressors like Tyler, and sees takedown notices as an educational effort.

“We are trying to notify people,” he said. “The person may not understand this is inappropriate behavior. Clearly our first approach would be to try to let them know.”

The MPAA’s exchange with Robert Sullivan, one of the first recipients of a takedown notice, was a bit more acrimonious. As a student at the University of Iowa last year, Sullivan said he was sharing files on Internet Relay chat for “10 minutes max.” Two weeks later, his dorm room Ethernet access was shut off, and he was hauled into the residence hall dean’s office for a discussion of “Ethernet abuse.”

“They suspended my network rights for the rest of the year,” Sullivan said. “They said that it could have been worse and I could have been kicked out of the hall.”

Sullivan is hardly alone. About 100 Iowa students received takedown notices last year — one of several college campuses targeted by anti-piracy efforts.

With a combination of tech-savvy youth, plenty of bandwidth, and perhaps plenty of free time, colleges and universities are ripe for movie file swapping, Jacobsen said, so the MPAA has made efforts to focus on schools. In recent months, the MPAA has sent notices to Stanford and the University of Texas at Austin criticizing the schools’ efforts to stop file-swapping.

In the letter to Stanford President John Hennessy, MPAA chairman Jack Valenti criticized Stanford’s “acceptance of theft which collides with moral and civic compact.” Stanford responded by saying it had taken steps to stop piracy by its students.

The movie industry’s letter-writing campaign shows it’s trying to learn from the lesson of the music industry, which failed to address the Internet music piracy issue until it was almost overrun by it. Some estimates say more than a billion songs per day were flying around the Net in Napster’s heyday. Movie swapping is considerably less popular and more clunky, but some 400,000 to 600,000 movies are downloaded every day, according to the MPAA.

And the number is steadily rising thanks to increased availability of broadband Internet access and new compression techniques. Even just two years ago, downloading a movie online was relatively complicated and time consuming, but now, an average movie can be downloaded over a broadband connection in about half its running time, the MPAA says.

Needless to say, the letters aren’t popular. Some critics raise the possibility of “false positives,” suggesting Ranger’s software might falsely accuse a file swapper — perhaps someone sharing a home video that happened to be named “Simpsons,” for example. A Hawaii-based Web site named InternetMovies.com says this happened to them last year. It was temporarily knocked offline by its Internet provider after an MPAA takedown notice was received. InternetMovies.com, which claims it wasn’t offering copywritten material, filed suit against the MPAA on April 25 for causing a business disruption.

But Jacbosen says InternetMovies was offering up pirated material, and furthermore, he claims Ranger is almost never wrong.

“Of all the letters we have sent out, we only had 2 other people who corresponded back who said we were mistaken,” Jacobsen said. “And we didn’t think we were.”

But while the cease-and-desist letters will continue, so will the cat-and-mouse game between copyright holders and Web users bent on sharing files.

Just this week, a new file-swapping program was announced that promises more anonymity to file swappers —- making them harder for the industry to find and stop. Called “Flyster,” the program will allow downloading in complete anonymity, according to developer Louis-Eric Simard. However, those who host files for download could still be traced, he said. Meanwhile, other developers are working on technologies that would add anonymity to file sharing networks.

Jacobsen acknowledges the MPAA is fighting an uphill battle while trying to shut off access to pirated films. He wouldn’t say if he felt the takedown letter campaign was successful.

“It’s all relative,” he said. “Clearly we have a colossal problem out there ... and it doesn’t appear to be getting smaller.”

It will work in an area with one highspeed service provider. With two, one could reasonably switch between the two providers at will. Comply for a few days, put the content back up, get the notice, pull the content. When kicked off the provider, get the new provider, rinse and repeat.

Additionally, ISP's are more interested in revenue then in serving as CopyCops.

There was a GREAT acoustic performance on Howard Stern by some chick named Edna Swap. I guess she wrote the song 'Torn' that was then sung by Nancy Umbruglia.

But Nancy did the song in this peppy, upbeat manner, and the song is NOT peppy and upbeat. It's about a very destroyed woman, devastated by some jerky guy.

Nancy sings it peppy. Upbeat. Happy. The song was performed by Edna in a haunting, angst-filled way on Howard Sterns show -- and she said that was how it should have been performed. I looked for it everywhere. The only place I could find it was in the Gnutella world. I never could have found it anywhere else.

Xcrew the record companies. They are as bad as liberals, and in most cases, are one and the same.

Most, if not all of the stuff I get off the networks is material they will never release...like raw rehearsal tapes, early "before they were known" recordings and out of print movies. Disney will never reissue Song of the South, but it's there for the taking if you want it. Supply and demand. If they won't supply what the people want, they will just go somewhere else and get it.

Xcrew the record companies. They are as bad as liberals, and in most cases, are one and the same.

Oh no. Now you've done it! There's gonna be a whole army of FReepers heading over here making accusations that downloading music/movies from the internet is no different than beating up grandma and running off with her Social Security check as happened on this thread.

Disregarding the technical aspects, in light of Sept. 11th., isn't this offensive. The movie industry has more security than the nation. Whenever I see the "WARNING! FBI!" at the beginning of a video, I have a sickening feeling that the FBI cares more about helping the Dems in Hollywood get their bucks than in getting Al Qaeda.

It pays for politicians to pay a lot of attention to H'wd, and H'wd has certainly gotten a lot of bang for their buck from the FBI.

And beside...if the movie companies really want to stop the bootlegging of movies, they should take a close look at who they are sending their "screener" tapes and DVD's to. Most of the boots out there now are of pretty high quality and are being leaked to the file sharing networks from people with access to prints and digital copies of the stuff.

How long does it take to download a DVD on DSL or cable-modem? A DVD is 7+ GB and high-speed DSL (over 700Kb/sec) is just able to do video (TV quality) in real time. Most people still have 56Kb/s dialup!

Downloading quality video is still a long way off, or a job for very patient people. You could go to the video shop, rent the movie watch it and return it before the download finishes!

Piracy of intellectual property is why all of the big movies, movie stars and most of the musicians are American brands--we're one of the few countries that, up until recently, didn't participate in the media black market. In countries where piracy is unchecked, such as in Asia, there is little incentive to invest in entertainment or software-related endeavors.
Having said that, the liberals in Hollywood have been preaching the virtues of relativism for long enough now to be able to enjoy the fruits of their philosophy, and they don't like it one tiny bit. Maybe I can summon up a crocodile tear or two...

I saw Edna Swap 4 yrs ago in a club in Syracuse. They mentioned the fact that Natalie Imbruglia basically ran with their song and hit it big while they languished. A group called Stretch Princess appeared with them also. I came home and searched the web for info on them as they both were very good. The only place I found anything was on file-sharing FTP sites. This was pre-Napster.

The moral of the story is that file-sharing is good for the little guy and bad for the big-guy. The file-sharers get the bands the Corporate Recorders don't want to promote, or sign, out in the public eye.

How long does it take on cable? The answer is about 6-10 hours per 700 MB file depending on the rate it is sending, which is entirely dependent on the quantity and quality of senders at the moment... if that makes sense.

I have done it, it is dirty business and it is most definately stealing. The quality of the stuff out there varies from outright fakes to cheap poor quality to excellent DVD quality. It is a smoke filled room full of liars and thieves, and sometimes they cheat you. It is part of the business when you deal with liars and thieves.

Of course, I have only downloaded one movie when it was not yet available, and will legitimize myself and ease my guilt by buying the real thing when it becomes available. The particular movie I have was broken into two 700 MB files, downloaded over two different nights. Another One-file DivX 700 MB version is available, at considerable loss in quality. I have seen them both.

I do think it is stealing, and I do think the producers of movies deserve to be paid for their work. So I will buy it.

I don't know if I will do the same thing again. KaZaa is an extremely insidious place, and I uninstalled the software immediately, only to find a nasty infection of spyware that had to be cleaned off. My machine needed penicillan, and I needed a shower and a confessional.

Next year, the pre-release bootlegs of my next favorite movie will be available... it will be a test. Aw heck, who am I fooling.

Here is the thread here that discussed the spyware installed by KaZaa when you use it. It is insidious stuff, hidden virtual networking stuff that makes you part of a big bandwidth pool. They borrow your unused bandwidth and pass information through you, supposedly...

This is in addition to the files you download from them, which remain in a shared directory that can be accessed by others seeking the files, which is how they operate, and is not insidious, that is the name of the game.

Within the thread are instructions for getting rid of it.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/675512/posts

Explain to me how you can make the logical connection between duplicating a CD and walking out the store without paying for it. There is only one true definition of theft and that is taking property without compensation or permission (copying a CD is creating new property). Oh $hit, the government does that to 90% of the population every day. Who is going to arrest the government?

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.