Hollywood studios join forces to fight piracy

Motion Picture Laboratories will research and create new technologies to stop the unauthorised distribution of films, particularly via the Internet.

The company, also named Movielabs, will have offices in Los Angeles and a USD 30 million budget in its first two years.

Dan Glickman, president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), called the venture "a smart investment", adding that the non-profit company would "help the entertainment industry adopt new means of fighting piracy and protecting copyrights".

There are thousands of new concepts circling in the hi-tech community about how to develop tools to fight piracy and researching and developing these techniques will help save the studios and distributors money, Glickman said.

Plans include devising ways to jam camcorders being used to record movies in cinemas illegally, and developing methods of detecting illegal content sharing on peer-to-peer networks.

The movie studios estimate they lose as much as USD 3.5 billion a year due to the illegal copying of films.

Source: Portfolio online financial journal



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