Posted on: Friday, April 15, 2005
Two O'ahu residents sued for downloading movies
By Sean Hao
Advertiser Staff Writer
Several motion-picture studios sued two O'ahu residents this week for allegedly downloading movies, including "Catwoman" and "Garfield," online.
The Motion Picture Association of America alleged copyright infringement in two lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court in Honolulu on Wednesday. The trade association took the step in part to dissuade others from illegally swapping movies and music via the Internet.
The local suits were part of a wave of cases filed nationwide Wednesday, said Anne Caliguiri, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association of America.
Movie companies are hoping the lawsuits will curtail illegal downloading of copyrighted works, which cuts into the earnings of studios. The MPAA estimates losses due to piracy total $3 billion annually.
Film studios said they decided to sue people who download movies and identified them by name to illustrate how easy it is to track them.
Monica Carroll of 'Ewa Beach is being sued by Paramount Pictures Corp. and Twentieth Century Fox Films Corp. Daral Lee of Honolulu is being sued by Disney Enterprises Inc., Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Paramount. The Advertiser was unable yesterday to contact Carroll or Lee.
"A lot of people have the misconception when they use the Internet they're anonymous," Caliguiri said. "They're wrong."
Among the other movies allegedly downloaded by the two named in the Hawai'i lawsuits were "The Stepford Wives," "King Arthur," "Without a Paddle" and "The Perfect Score," according to court documents. The civil suits seek unspecified damages and attorneys' fees.
"Basically, it means they had downloaded it at some point and were most likely offering it for illegal download," Caliguiri said. "Obviously there's millions of users using these services (that allow people to share movies online). This is just a random sample."
The crackdown against online piracy expanded last November when the movie industry began filing an unspecified number of lawsuits against individuals that illegally downloaded or traded movies via the Internet. Some have since been settled out of court.
Critics of the lawsuits say that rather than going after individuals, studios should find technical fixes that protect movies against illegal copying and make it easier to purchase movies online legally.
Methods to break current DVD encryption technologies are commonly available, said George Darby, a Honolulu intellectual property rights attorney.
"It's a lax security system," Darby said. Filing lawsuits while copying and sharing DVDs is so easy "is sort of like trying to manage a health epidemic without vaccines and treating people on an individual basis.
"They need to vaccinate their content against cracking."
Reach Sean Hao at shao@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8093.
