Tech Shout!

The Motion Picture Association of America has now targeted search engines in their battle against piracy. MPAA says that the search engines provide links to copyrighted material, and though they do not distribute any files themselves yet such sites are a critical piece of the infrastructure that allows movie piracy.

Charges were filed Thursday against: BinNews.com, Torrentspy.com, IsoHunt, BTHub.com, TorrentBox.com, NiteShadow.com, Ed2k-It.com, NZB-Zone.com, and DVDRs.net. The suits mark the first time the MPAA has gone after Usenet, which has largely been secured in the crackdown on illicit file sharing.

Unlike P2P networks, which aid content swapping between users, Usenet operators host the content directly on their servers. However, because they do not regulate what files get uploaded, such companies have thus far avoided legal attacks through protections offered to Internet service providers.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act affords similar protection to search engine operators, as long as they are not aware of infringing content and remove the links when notified. In a move to taking down links to feature films, The MPAA signed an agreement with BitTorrent.com last November.

However, the sites sued Thursday benefit financially from such links and the MPAA says it sees no distinction between those providing the content and those linking to it.

John Malcolm, Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA said, “Website operators who abuse technology to facilitate infringements of copyrighted works by millions of people are not anonymous – they can and will be stopped.” Malcolm continued, “Disabling these powerful networks of illegal file distribution is a significant step in stemming the tide of piracy on the Internet.”

Just a few days back MPAA effectively shut down a major server known as Razorback2 used in the eDonkey2000 network. Razorback2 was accessed by millions of P2P users on the network and served as an index of content shared by users, similar to the search Web sites.

The MPAA says the movie industry lost $1.9 billion in 2005 thanks to Internet piracy. Nonetheless, the association claims that it is making growth, and has shut down 75 BitTorrent and eDonkey sites in the 2005 itself.