MPAA's 'favor' to parents

To enlist parents' help in discouraging kids' file-sharing, the film industry will offer free software that detects "P2P files," CNET reports. The Register goes a bit far in its assessment that the Motion Picture Association of America's move "is designed to split families right down the middle. The MPAA hopes that new software will encourage parents to turn their children over to the authorities as file-sharing felons." As for the software, it won't delete, just scan for and find music, movies, and P2P software like Kazaa's, Grokster's, and eDonkey's on a PC's hard drive.

Along with the free software, the MPAA announced it had filed about 200 lawsuits against file-sharers across the US this week. Unlike the approach of the record industry (RIAA), which goes after people who share hundreds, sometimes thousands, of music files, the MPAA is, in some cases, suing people who shared a single movie, according to the Washington Post in its roundup of news stories on this. However, the single-movie-sharers sued are those who distributed a film before it was released in theaters. The Guardian reports that "individuals could be liable for $30,000 (£16,000) for each traded file, and up to $150,000 (£80,000) per downloaded film, if the download was willfully done." The anti-P2P software will soon be available at the MPAA's RespectCopyrights.org, according to the trade association's press release on all of these developments.