Amazon's Unbox to Add HD Movies

Amazon's Unbox service will soon offer High-Definition TV shows and movies, according to an article by TV Week magazine.

The e-commerce site has offered movie and TV show downloads for several months, but only in standard-definition. The Unbox downloads are available at Amazon's web site and on TiVo DVRs that have Broadband connections, including the $299 TiVo HD set-top.

Jim Denney, TiVo's vice president of product marketing, tells TV Week that Amazon will soon add high-def programming. The executive would not offer a specific launch date, but said it would happen in "in the not too distant future."

Microsoft's XBox, Apple TV and the Vudu VOD set-top now offer high-def programming over the Net directly to the TV. For TiVo, the addition of Amazon high-def content would help the company's efforts to generate more subscribers in the growing HDTV audience.

Hollywood wants $15 million from Pirate Bay Downloads

Hollywood wants $15.4 million in damages for copyright infringement from the people behind The Pirate Bay, according to a claim filed by industry organization the Motion Picture Association.

Pirate Bay is one of the most widely used BitTorrent trackers for music, movies and software. Previously the recording industry, computer game developers and local movie companies, have specified damages totalling $15.4 million dollars.

Included in the claim are "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," "The Pink Panther," "Syriana," "Walk the Line," and 13 episodes from the first season of "Prison Break."

"The Pink Panther" is the most popular title among Pirate Bay users; the least popular, by a mile, is "Syriana." They have been downloaded 49,593 and 3,679 times, respectively, according to MAQS, the law firm which represents MPA.

The damages are based onper downloaded movie and every time someone had downloaded a copy of Prison Break. The sums are not unreasonable, because the distributed files didn't include copy protection, and were made available before the release of a DVD or a legal download, according to MAQS.

Included in the final sum is also interest, which will continue to grow, and damages for the harm Pirate Bay has caused.

Torrentspy.com fined $111 Million

A $111 million law suite has ruled in favor of 6 major Hollywood studios against file-sharing web site TorrentSpy.com

The web site was fined a total of $30,000 for almost 3,700 movie and television show downloads which were on offer.

Torrentspy.com was shut down in March and its operators Valence Media LLC have filed for bankruptcy protection in the UK asking for judgment on the ruling to be stayed.

In a major win for Hollywood studios, a California federal judge has ordered TorrentSpy to pay some $110 million in damages for infringing the copyright of thousands of films and TV shows through its BitTorrent search engine.

The Los Angeles judge, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, also issued a permanent injunction against TorrentSpy, which was once one of the most popular indexes of BitTorrent files before it shut down in March after a two-year copyright battle with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The company closed its site on March 24, citing financial hardship and a desire to protect the privacy of its users.

MPAA CEO Dan Glickman said the judgment should serve as warning to other search services of file-sharing applications.

"The demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the studios and demonstrates that such pirate sites will not be allowed to continue to operate without facing relentless litigation by copyright holders," he said in a statement.

The judge ordered TorrentSpy to pay $30,000 per copyright infringement for 3,699 films and shows. That works out to be worth $110,970,000. How that amount will be paid is unclear. A call to TorrentSpy's attorney was not immediately returned. The judgment puts a fine point on another long battle between technologists and copyright holders.

The studios originally sued TorrentSpy in February 2006, alleging that the site promoted and contributed to online copyright infringement by helping people locate illegally copied films and television shows on the Internet. Last December, a federal judge sided with the MPAA by saying that TorrentSpy had destroyed evidence that would make a fair trial possible.

According to the court, TorrentSpy operators had intentionally modified or deleted directory headings naming copyrighted titles and forum posts that explained how to find specific copyrighted works; concealed IP addresses of users; and withheld the names and addresses of forum moderators. The company had previously been fined $30,000 for violations of discovery orders and were warned of severe sanctions if they continued to ignore the orders.

TorrentSpy's attorney, Ira Rothken, called that ruling "draconian in nature and unfair." He said he did not believe any data was intentionally destroyed, and that some actions were taken to protect the privacy of TorrentSpy users.

Rothken also said at the time that TorrentSpy would appeal any decision on damages.

Still, the permanent injunction prohibits Valence Media, operator of TorrentSpy, from engaging in any activity that "encourages, promotes or solicits, or knowingly facilitates, enables or assists, copyright infringement," according to the court.

ISPs Must Tackle Download Piracy

Internet service providers, website operators and manufacturers of devices that are used by some to pirate content should play a part in stamping out that piracy, Sumner Redstone, chairman and controlling shareholder of both Viacom and CBS, said on Tuesday.

"It is obviously impossible to check every computer or look over the shoulder of every user around the world to see whether they have a license to use our content and we don’t want to do that," said Redstone in a keynote address to the Seoul Digital Forum. "So solutions turn on enlisting the aggregators - ISPs, device manufacturers, hosting companies, and site operators - in this effort. We're not ask for perfection. But we do ask that companies that become aware of piracy using their facilities, do something about it."

Redstone, who was on his first visit to South Korea, spent about one third of his keynote address at the event speaking about piracy and the damage it does to companies like his own.

"When you can instantly and easily download a high-quality, feature length film for free, with no repercussions, the incentive to purchase it quickly evaporates," he said. "If this sort of theft is allowed to continue unabated, the incentive to create programming will disappear."

While battling piracy content providers need to continue forging on into new media markets and utilizing new distribution methods to reach consumers, he said.

"Media companies, in turn, need to make it easy for consumers to obtain our content in a legal manner," said Redstone. "We cannot let the lack of perfect antipiracy tools keep us from forging ahead in providing the best, most innovative, creative content to the consumer over whatever medium they prefet, whenever and wherever they prefer it."

Content providers like Redstone's CBS and Viacom have been battling online piracy of movies and TV shows for several years.

First efforts involved a string of high-profile lawsuits against individual internet users but with so many people participating in file sharing and other forms of piracy the target of actions switched to site operators.

YouTube has been a major focus, and a chorus of complaints from TV stations and movie companies pushed the Google-owned site to introduce a watermarking system that seeks to block copyrighted material from being uploaded.

"They cannot get away with stealing our product," he said of YouTube. We cannot tolerate any form of piracy by anyone including YouTube."

But getting ISPs to monitor and filter traffic of their users has traditionally been a difficult thing to do. Most keep their hands off packets traveling through their networks and devices arguing that they are mere conduits and not responsible for the actions of their users. Today many ISPs in the US will act on copyright complaints but only after a claim has been made under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA).

Redstone also called on regulators the world over to ensure copyrights are protected and infringements are punished.

In some nations the tide is turning against piracy thanks to new laws, he said, which were introduced not to help Hollywood but to prevent damage to emerging local content industries.

"The good news is: I am, increasingly preaching to the converted in piracy-prone markets around the world," he said. "Governments in China and India are starting to take an active interest in enforcing copyright, if only to protect their own homegrown content."

Sky TV announce movie download service

Sky TV has announced a new download service that will be charged at $5 per month and offer members unlimited movie and TV programme downloads to their computers.

Starting next month, Sky TV will offer a movie and TV programme download service through its Sky Online website that will allow users unlimited downloads for $5 per month.

Users will need to be current Sky TV subscribers, and for movie downloads you will need to be a Sky Movies subscriber. Sky TV chief executive John Fellet says the available movies will closely mirror the Sky Movies offering. Sky Box Office movies will not be included in the service.

Initially, only movies and programmes that have already screened on Sky will be available for download, but Sky is negotiating with Hollywood studios to secure rights to sell movies online that have not been broadcast on the TV service.

Telstra Clear and Vodafone are underpinning the service and John Fellet says these ISPs are likely to offer special deals that will reduce the broadband data charges users will face.

Vodafone spokesman Paul Brislen was not able to supply details and said that negotiations with Sky were still on-going.

Files will be delivered in the Windows Media format and will come with Microsoft's Advanced DRM 2.9. This means the file will be locked to the machine it is downloaded to and will come with a time-specific licence that may be anything from one week to a month.

Users can watch the movie or programme as many times as they like within the licence period. When the licence has expired, the user can log back in to the service to the renew the licence if it is still available.

Sky TV general manager Sam Morse said licences will remain current in much the same time frame that the same movies are playing on the Sky Movies TV service.