Movie industry hunts down online pirates

The movie industry is hunting down digital film swappers and blocking their internet connection.

The action is part of intensifying efforts by the entertainment industry to control piracy.

The Motion Picture Association of America uses a special search engine to scour the internet for copyright movies, which circulate on the same peer-to-peer software networks as MP3 music files.

More than 100,000 cease-and-desist letters have been sent since 2001 through users' internet service providers, the MPAA said.

In a newer initiative, AOL Time Warner's broadband division has begun trying to identify and stop customers who upload huge amounts of data, which in almost all cases means people trading bulky video or music files.

"We are not blocking the use of any applications or access to any Web sites," said Mark Harrad, a spokesman for Time Warner Cable.

"But we are doing various things to manage bandwidth better and to interfere with people who are in violation of (their) service agreements," he said.

Harrad declined to elaborate on interference techniques. But he denied the effort was specifically targeted at people swapping music and movie files, saying the issue is bandwidth hogs, not piracy.

AOL Time Warner owns one of the seven major studios, Warner Brothers, a member of the MPAA. It also owns Warner Music Group, one of the five major record companies.

Meanwhile, California Congressman Howard Berman is preparing legislation that would allow entertainment companies to obstruct the peer-to-peer networks with a variety of invasive electronic techniques, including software that blocks file transfers, redirects users to other sites or confuses users with fake files.