...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 legalised 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 says.
BitTorrent itself has never been sued, said Lin, but 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 centres — used by the BitTorrent 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.
Despite all that legal activity, it's not all bad news for TV and movie producers. They have far better alternatives than the music industry did when it was doing battle with Napster. Apple's iTunes Store, for one, didn't exist six years ago. Now, in the US, SNL fans can buy many of their favourite segments for $1.99.
In addition, sites like YouTube and Google Video, which also posted the American Airlines video and was asked to take it down, have a legitimate purpose: allowing users to share their own videos. And they aren't pure replacements for TV programming the way peer-to-peer networks were seen by some to be a substitute for buying music.
"It's less Napsterisation than it is a new clip culture," said Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "You have to remember what Napster was about; people were getting for free what they should have been buying."
So far, NBC has asked less than 10 sites, including YouTube, to remove more than 3,000 video clips the network says are copyright-protected and being...
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