Hollywood's major studios moved Thursday to sue individuals who download pirated films from the internet, escalating a campaign that had previously focused on file-sharing networks rather than their users.
The Motion Picture Association of America announced the legal offensive at a press conference in Los Angeles. Its newly installed president, Dan Glickman, said the studios had identified specific individuals on peer-to-peer networks and that the campaign could generate hundreds of lawsuits each month.
Glickman described online piracy as the gravest economic threat the film industry had faced in its entire history. He added that users who assumed internet anonymity shielded them from liability were mistaken.
The MPAA cited a federal government study estimating that counterfeit goods, including pirated films, cost the US economy up to $250 billion a year. The association represents seven major studios and defends industry interests in Washington and in courts worldwide.
The move follows a strategy already used by major record labels, which began suing individual file-sharing users in September 2003, after a federal judge ruled that the networks themselves bore no liability for their users' conduct.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this AFP wire report, first published in November 2004, in its own words.