An update on Piracy.

I saw this article on the IMDB and thought it was interesting. Reminds me of the first time I realized how big a problem piracy could be for movie theatres. Western Film was playing In Good Company. I was walking back to my office and right outside the theatre I saw two people watching the same movie on their laptop, needless to say I wasn't impressed.

"Having determined that some of the most flagrant movie piracy occurs on college campuses, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) have sent blistering letters to the presidents of 40 universities in 25 states, demanding that they take action against illegal sharing of copyrighted material. The letter observed that several file-sharing sites promise security and confidentiality, giving "many students incentive to engage in activity they have otherwise learned is illegal and unacceptable." The two groups said that they intend to "prioritize our focus" on campus piracy and asked the schools to install blocking and filtering software in their network systems. Meanwhile, today's (Wednesday) Wall Street Journal reported that a study commissioned by the MPAA concluded that the industry is losing $6.1 billion annually worldwide as a result of piracy in all forms, $1.3 billion of that total in the U.S. alone. The study indicated that Mexico ranks as the world's largest market for pirated DVDs followed by China and Russia. At a conference at the Tribeca Film Festival on Monday, BitTorrent co-founder Ashwin Navin said that users of BitTorrent download 700,000 films each day. "