Film theft in the UK - Future of Copyright

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a notice is served for infringing items to be
removed. If the traders continue to post the
infringing items, they may be liable to a full
FACT investigation that could end in
prosecution. One example was that of an
individual in Derbyshire who headed up a
counterfeit ring aiding online sales of infringing
product. After a long and protracted
investigation and collation of evidence, the
trader responsible for the online payment
system to facilitate all financial transactions
was prosecuted in March 2002 and pleaded
guilty to offences under the Trade Marks Act.
According to FACT, he was sentenced to six
months imprisonment and ordered to pay costs
of £8,000 46 . All offending domains were closed
down.
Most recently in January 2004, FACT, working
in conjunction with the British Phonographic
Industry (BPI) and Police and Trading Standards,
smashed an Internet piracy ring, which
consisted of 300 subscribers, in approximately
a dozen major UK towns and cities. According
to FACT, material found ranged from music,
films, software, computer games and
paedophilic material.
However, such actions do not address the
biggest threat posed by the Internet: P2P
filesharing networks. Although FACT’s
monitoring of online activity can also take it
into P2P filesharing, the effective monitoring of
P2P networks and other Internet distribution
channels is a highly specialist activity requiring
advanced technical capabilities and systems.
This is currently mostly the preserve of a
handful of expert companies, which mostly
reside in the US.
In general terms, it is fair to suggest that the
film industry has yet to formulate a fully
coherent strategy to deal with copyright
infringements via P2P networks. One reason for
this is that, in the main, P2P users are not
trading film files as a commercial act, but
exchange files with other users as a means of
saving money. This diminishes legitimate sales
since P2P users acquire and disseminate
copyright material without paying the
copyright holder for the privilege.
One approach of the music industry has been
to sue individual P2P users, primarily teenagers
and students, for copyright infringement.
Whether or not this is a desirable tactic for the
film industry to pursue is addressed in the next
chapter. The film industry so far has not sued
individual P2P users. The MPA and its member
companies are, however, considering all of
their legal enforcement options against P2P
services and against the heavy users of such
services, although the MPA member companies
view litigation as an option of last resort.
The MPA’s worldwide Internet Enforcement
programme is currently focused on notifying
ISPs of the abuse of their services. The
programme uses a search engine to search the
Internet, looking for unauthorised files. When
it finds an infringement, an email is sent to the
service provider, seeking the taking down or
blocking of the site or file in question. Over
225,000 such notices were issued in 2003, over
101,000 of them to ISPs located in the
European, Middle East and African region. The
vast majority of the notices sent concern illegal
downloading, particularly P2P infringements.
This process of searching takes place in the
public space of the Internet and the main focus
is on the service provider, not the user.
However, according to the MPA, ISPs have been
becoming increasingly unco-operative in
relation to downloads, but remain reasonably
helpful in the fight against hard goods piracy.
The MPA also pursues repeat infringers from
time to time, and encourages local initiatives
designed to secure criminal enforcement
against Internet piracy that is commercial,
organised, or large scale. Since 2001, FACT has
been a member of the Internet Enforcement
Group (IEG), a cross-industry body of Internet
investigators representing the book publishing,
music, games, software, merchandising and
film industries. The IEG meets to share