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US filmmakers lose hundreds
of million of dollars to piracy |
A Hong Kong man has been jailed for three months for film piracy after
he shared movie files over the internet.
The authorities say he is the first person in the world to be prosecuted for passing
on files using a popular file-sharing program called BitTorrent.
It makes the sharing of material easy by breaking a file up into fragments
and then distributing them.
The film industry says it hopes the sentence handed down to Chan Nai-ming will
prove a deterrent to others.
Hidden trail
Chan, an unemployed man who called himself "Big Crook", was
arrested in January for uploading three Hollywood movies - Daredevil, Red Planet
and Miss Congeniality - onto the internet without a licence.
He was using a popular file-sharing program called BitTorrent, which allows
users to download content from multiple sources. Each source supplies a small
part of the whole film or song.
When anyone downloads a file it becomes a source for others, making it easy
to share or trade music or movies, but very hard to trace who has uploaded or
downloaded the material.
BitTorrent also has many non-infringing uses as it offers a cost-effective
way of distributing large files online.
The Motion Pictures Association of America says its members lose $900m dollars
in potential revenue to piracy each year in Asia alone.
The authorities in Hong Kong hope that Chan's three-month sentence will deter
others. But the BBC's Hong Kong correspondent Chris Hogg says that since April
when Chan was first charged and his case was widely publicised, there has been
no noticeable impact on the number of files being shared over the internet.
BitTorrent targeted
The other problem is the time it takes to build a successful prosecution, making
it almost impossible to carry out a comprehensive crackdown on small-time internet
pirates, our correspondent adds.
The movie industry started targeting the operators of BitTorrent networks themselves
last December.
It filed numerous lawsuits against BitTorrent server sites which linked to
copyrighted material in order to undermine the ability to swap content.
The action resulted in the closure of some high-profile BitTorrent sites.
In May, US Federal authorities succeeded in closing a website that was distributing
pirated copies of Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith before the film
opened in cinemas.
