Does video have a Napster problem?

news analysis It was a heavy-metal drummer who provided the defining moment for the original Napster and peer-to-peer music networks.

In May 2000, Lars Ulrich, the bombastic drummer for the band Metallica, personally delivered a list of 335,000 screen names of people suspected of music piracy to Napster's Silicon Valley office. With that giant stack of names came the beginning of the end for freewheeling music exchange services.

Fast-forward six years. The new threat in Internet-enabled copyright infringement is centering on video. YouTube, the most trafficked of the video-sharing sites, has recently been asked to pull three videos--two skits from NBC Universal's "Saturday Night Live" and an American Airlines training bit--from its site owing to possible copyright violations.

But what's going on with YouTube, which promptly yanked the videos when NBC contacted it, pales in comparison to the growing legal concerns about video peer-to-peer networks. Increasingly, it's looking like movie and television producers are heading toward their own file-sharing showdown.

"I think there is a fast and loose game being played by many people who are aggregating video online and selling advertising on their Web sites. And I think that there will be a day of reckoning," said Steven Starr, chief executive of Revver, a site that lets people distribute their videos and make money off ads when people watch them. "I don't believe you can build a sustainable business on copyright infringement."

So far this year, more than 50 people in the U.S. have been sued for allegedly swapping copyright movies online using peer-to-peer networks, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. Last month, the MPAA sued five sites that allow users to search for allegedly pirated files. It also sued file-swapping software provider eDonkey and several newsgroups, and shut down the Razorback2 file-swapping site network in Switzerland.

The spate of suits raises troubling questions for TV and movie producers, who, as more and more consumers buy the Net pipes necessary to bring in and send out video files, are reaching a crossroads their counterparts in music hit six years ago. About 67 percent of Americans who access the Internet at home now do so with a broadband connection, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. That's up from 31 percent five years ago.

"I don't believe you can build a sustainable business on copyright infringement."

--Steven Starr, CEO, Revver

Couple that with the popularity of TiVo digital video recorders and even software for recording video on the PC, as well as easy-to-rip DVDs, and the technology is there for a vast amount of video piracy. That doesn't mean "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy will start flipping around the Net like Metallica's "Unforgiven" did six years ago. But it does mean that short clips such as funny "SNL" skits or favorite moments from "The Simpsons" are ripe for the picking.

Like Napster, services such as eDonkey and BitTorrent provide technology that allows users to search for and access files over a peer-to-peer network. With newsgroups, also called Usenet, the files uploaded are stored in pieces on the Usenet servers around the world and not on individual computer users' hard drives, like with peer-to-peer.

The services are having a big impact on the Net. More than 60 percent of Internet traffic is being taken up by peer-to-peer swaps, and about 60 percent of those swaps involve video content, according to recent data from network infrastructure company CacheLogic. Though it's difficult to estimate how much of that video is pirated, analysts say it would be naive to believe most or even a great portion of it is legal.

As the music industry found out in the late 1990s, once that pirated material hits peer-to-peer networks, it's impossible to put a lid on it. And cracking down on the networks can be a futile effort, because many of them operate underground or are run out of countries without strong copyright protections.

Representatives for eDonkey could not be reached for comment. But a BitTorrent spokeswoman extended an olive branch to the MPAA. "I think we can play in the sandbox together," said Lily Lin, director of communications for BitTorrent. "We're working with the MPAA about finding a model where consumers can get the digital content they want in a legalized way."

Last November, BitTorrent announced that the studios had agreed to notify BitTorrent if anything in their search engine infringed on their rights. In turn, BitTorrent would promptly remove it, said Ashwin Navin, president and co-founder of the San Francisco company.

"Our hope is that they would replace that material with content that they would like to see distributed by our technology," Navin said.

BitTorrent itself has never been sued, said Lin, but so-called BitTorrent trackers have been targeted. Trackers are not operated by BitTorrent. A tracker is a Web server operated by an individual that serves as one of many hubs--or coordination centers--used by the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol. Like other peer-to-peer networks, files are typically not stored on the tracker but on computers that connect to it.

So what to do about it? If you're the MPAA, you sue and sue again. "In general, we look for people who are using technology to facilitate online piracy for people on the Internet to get illegal files," said MPAA spokeswoman Kori Bernards.

[zincmann]

Let the FREE movie revolution continue!

I am not justified by any means to get the freely distributed content on sharing sites, but since I am not the original distributor of the seed for sharing I am just purely obtaining a copy for my own home viewing.

The studios make enough money when the film comes out in the theater. Just look at the obscene ticket prices! I rest my case!

[rzelazny]

It certainly is theft

But it is not the same as stealing physical property. While it is definitely wrong and completely unethical, it is more akin to stealing a service, like stealing cable or making illegal free phone calls. Shoplifting DVDs is a bad analogy.

[gekkoo7]

Macs can't watch NBC videos

So far every article I've read on this subject mentions that the NBC
clips are available gratis on its website, but no one acknowledges
that you have to be a Windows user to view them there.

[markdoiron]

Correction to Article Sidebar?

The article sidebar say "Music and television producers ...", but I think it should read "Movie and television producers ...".

mark d.

[Darryl Snortberry]

Cheating Is As American....

...as apple pie. Since some of you are already on your high horse you can go ahead and give your land back to the mexicans and native americans and pay back wages to the descendants of slaves. It's what Jesus would do.

[stansoft]

They are right!

You cannot just obtain a copy of a movie for your own viewing... when a movie starts they have a screen there where it says something like this: unauthorized distribution, copying of movies even without monetary gain is investigated by the FBI and is punishable for up to 5 years in prison and/or $250,000 fine...

so law is law, and that's why this whole thing can be napster # 2!

--

Stan Oleynick, founder: http://www.enthem.com

i agree

totaly

[Jackson Cracker]

I guess they've never heard of Google...

Check out Google Groups, it seems to be a sustainable business based on copyright infringement.
Millions of complete copyrighted newsgroup articles displayed without the permission of the authors
and used to sell advertising.

[PeterWard87]

It's worse than Napster...much worse...

YouTube has more of a problem than many see. A tragedy that has been made possible through large sites like YouTube is copyright infringement. I have seen many users that do nothing but download other's videos and (successfully) claim them as their own ideas. This is much more tragic than a ripped-off Hollywood movie, which is easily discernable from a grassroots artist, as the small artists lose a substantial portion of their notariaty. In addition to reams of red tape one must traverse to remove a pirated video, YouTube makes no move to check for pirated videos from no-name artists. To me, that is much worse than multimillionares losing a little income.