Movie studios bid to reel in internet pirates

THE movie industry is trying a new approach to stop people from downloading pirated copies of films over the internet it's asking them nicely.

Movie studios launched a campaign yesterday with television ads and in-theatre spots featuring makeup artists, set painters and other crafts people saying piracy robs them of a living.

The Motion Picture Association of America has also developed a curriculum on copyrights for use in schools.

The Digital Citizenship programme covers the history of copyright and culminates in a nationwide contest in which students suggest ways to persuade peers that swapping copies of music and movies is not only illegal, but unethical.

"What we are endeavouring to do is both communicate that it's wrong and also communicate that there are human stakes and those stakes are not just millionaires making less millions," said Peter Chernin, president and chief operating officer of News Corp, whose Twentieth Century Fox studio made the spots.

The film and music industries have recently become more aggressive in enforcing their copyrights in the courts as well as lobbying for tougher laws to punish violators.

However, while computer copies of films are still too large to easily download and are often poor quality copies made using hand-held camcorders, music files are smaller and are CD quality, making them easy to share.

Movie studios believe they still have a few years before internet connections become fast enough to threaten them in the same way.

But studios will succeed only if they move quickly to offer legitimate alternatives consumers want, analysts say.

"It may just be that consumers aren't quite ready yet to turn to the internet for movies," said Fred von Lohmann, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "But when they are, the answer will be to offer them a compelling legitimate alternative, not telling them to behave themselves."