p2p news / p2pnet: The Big Six Hollywood studios have launched an all-out attack against p2p sites in America.

Their MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) says it’s filed lawsuits in federal courts across the US, with newsgroups added to the growing list of online sites that must be stamped out before the Hollywood moguls can rest easy.

Being sued are:

Torrent Sites: Isohunt.com; BTHub.com; TorrentBox.com; TorrentSpy.com; NiteShadow.com; and, Ed2k-It.com.

Newsgroups: NZB-Zone.com; BinNews.com; and, DVDRs.net.

The escalation is part of a co-ordinated international blitz. Under intense pressure from Hollywood, BitTorrent, perceived as being the greatest online ‘enemy,’ has become a studios-supported corporate enterprise with corporate goals, and a number of torrent sites were shut throughout 2005.

In Britain, the entertainment and software cartels’ Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact) has to all intents and purposes been given full police powers and on Tuesday, the RazorBack eDonkey/eMule server Razorback was taken down by the Belgian federal police, acting for Hollywood’s enforcement unit, the MPAA, thinly disguised as the MPA (Motion Picture Association).
.

Control control, control
Almost exactly a year ago, The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood by investigative reporter Edward Jay Epstein was published. In it, he says although movies earn a very small percentage of the studios’ total revenue, they’re the, “principal source of prestige and satisfaction in Hollywood.”

In a review of the book, the Washington Post’s Jonathan Yardley writes the grasp of the Big Six, Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney, is astonishing.

They “own all six broadcast networks in America,” as well as “64 cable networks whose reach accounts for most of the remainder of the prime-time television audience,” a combination that enables them to “control over 96 percent of the programs that carry commercial advertising during prime time,” he says, going on:

“They ‘control the television networks depended on by advertisers to reach children under 12 . . . and those designed for younger teens.’ They ‘dominate the worldwide distribution of movies, a studio business [the late] Steve Ross once described, with considerable justification, as a “money machine,” and they ‘control a large part of the entertainment media, including magazines . . . TV and radio interview shows . . . and cable channels that publicize movies.’ All of which is to say that they control ‘one of the largest consumer-based industries in America: home entertainment’ …..”

Freedom of choice
The entertainment industry sees the Net as something it must bring under rigid control before things get completely out of hand, as they’re threatening to do with the advent of p2p, and freedom of choice and instant communication between, and among, what were previously the cash-cow members of the universal captive audience.

“The main task of today’s studio is to collect fees for the use of the intellectual properties they control in one form or another and then to allocate those fees among the parties - including themselves - who create, develop, and finance the properties,” says Epstein his book.

“It is now essentially a service organization, a dream clearinghouse rather than a dream factory” and if this “service orgahnization” is to prosper, it must dominate all the elements, including the Net.

In its statement, the p2p sites are, “sophisticated enterprises,” says the MPAA, and the new attacks, “mark the first time the MPAA is taking action against sites that enable users of Newsgroups to easily find and download illegal content.

“Newsgroups are electronic bulletin boards which in recent years have become a major source of pirated content as users are able to attach movie, music and games files to their messages.”

Like their brethren in the music industry, Canute-like, the studios are trying desperately to stem the tide.

But they stand no chance. Peer-to-peer is here to stay.

Stay tuned.

Also See:
studios-supported - BitTorrent, Hollywood team up, November 22, 2005
taken down - Belgian police bust Razorback, February 21, 2006
Washington Post - ‘The Big Picture’, February 27, 2005

This entry was posted on Friday, February 24th, 2006 at 5:52 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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