Hollywood Sues Suspected Movie Pirates

"They're within their rights to file these suits, but all the information that I've seen says that the thousands of lawsuits filed by the recording industry have done little to curb file sharing," Corwin said.

In addition to the lawsuits, the MPAA is offering a free software tool that people can use to identify and delete all file-sharing programs and illegally copied movie and music files on their computers. The software will not report evidence of illegal content back to the studios, the association said. The tool will be made available at www.respectcopyrights.org, a site run by the MPAA.

The software was developed by DtecNet Software, a Copenhagen, Denmark-based software company. Its board of directors includes Chairman Johan Schluter, a member of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a London-based group that represents musicians and music companies in 75 countries. Another board member is Niels Bo Jorgensen, a member of the Danish Anti-Piracy Group.

The MPAA and the Encino, Calif.-based Video Software Dealers Association also said they are launching a public education campaign in video stores, supermarkets and drugstores across the country warning of the damage and consequences of movie piracy. The campaign, "Rated I: Inappropriate for All Ages," includes two 45-second videos that will play on television monitors in 10,000 of the nation's 24,000 video stores across the country starting in December.

Blockbuster, which controls 34 percent of the video rental market, will run the trailers from Dec. 7 through March 28 in its 5,500 stores, said spokesman Blake Lugash. The videos will run once an hour and alternate every two weeks, Lugash said.

The educational videos, which the MPAA produced, are distributed by the Seattle-based ScreenPlay Inc. The Video Software Dealers Association's members include Blockbuster, Hollywood Video and the home video divisions of the major film studios. It also counts retailers such as Amazon.com and Circuit City among its members. It is not clear whether members like Blockbuster and NetFlix will distribute the educational fliers in the movie-rental-via-mail services that they operate.

Hollywood's fight against movie piracy is modeled on an ongoing campaign that the Recording Industry Association of America launched last year against suspected music pirates. The RIAA has sued more than 6,100 people since September 2003. The group has secured thousands of settlements between $3,000 and $4,000. People who are caught with pirated films but are not hardcore pirate distributors could be sued for up to $30,000 per movie. Pirate distributors could be sued for as much as $150,000 a pop.

Record companies' sales have plummeted as the popularity of free "peer-to-peer" file sharing services like Kazaa and eDonkey has grown. Compact disc sales fell from $13.2 billion in 2000 to $11.2 billion in 2003, the RIAA said in March.

Filmmakers so far have dodged a similar fate, posting growing sales each year, despite the widespread availability of pirated films on the Internet. Experts say that may be because downloading a feature-length film can take hours, even on a high-speed Internet connection. Songs can take minutes or seconds to download.

Glickman and his predecessor Jack Valenti have said, however, that advancements in Internet technology could reduce the amount of time it takes to download a movie.

The nation's video stores also are worried about the pinch of movie piracy.

"These are sales and rentals that are not being made, that's money that's not going to the retailer. That's tax that's not being collected by governments. That's jobs that are not being created," said VSDA spokesman Sean Bersell. "[This] black market is siphoning off market share and what we don't want to see is it get worse than it already is."

--washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Robert MacMillan contributed to this article.