Group plans holiday spoiler for RIAA, studios

As the holiday season approaches, some opponents of the movie and music industries' legal efforts are planning to celebrate in a Grinch-like fashion.

Downhill Battle, a file-sharing activist group from Worcester, Mass., has launched an Internet campaign to send lumps of coal to the Recording Industry Association of America and the Motion Picture Association of America. The group said it will send a brick of unsightly coal for every $100 that people donate to digital rights defense groups Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge and IPac.

"It's a cute Christmas symbol for someone who's been bad all year," said Nicholas Reville, co-director of Downhill Battle. "I think it's appropriate for all types of things that the RIAA and the MPAA are doing."

A representative for the RIAA declined to comment on the campaign. A representative for the MPAA was not immediately available for comment.

Reville's campaign is a reaction to the raft of lawsuits that the industry groups have filed against suspected file swappers. Since last summer, the RIAA has sued more than 7,700 individuals, many of whom have settled the suits for thousands of dollars each. Hollywood has followed suit by targeting its own lawsuits against technologies and Web sites that promote unauthorized copying of its movies.

Just last week, the MPAA filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit against BitTorrent and eDonkey, two peer-to-peer technologies that allow speedy downloads of large digital files such as movies, video games and software.

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