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National concerns about file-sharing, especially within universities, have extended beyond music

To fight illegal file-sharing, the movie industry is doing everything short of filing lawsuits similar to those the Recording Industry Association of America held against individuals who allegedly downloaded copyrighted files.

“The movie industry hasn’t ruled anything out, but right now we’re taking as many steps as possible to ensure that (lawsuits don’t) need to be an option,” said Matthew Grossman, director of digital strategy for the Motion Picture Association of America.

One of these steps is watching the actions of the RIAA and assessing the results.

“We hope that as people stop downloading music they’ll stop downloading movies,” Grossman said.

The MPAA has shown its concern about illegal file-sharing by creating educational programs about file-sharing and by working with university administrators and information technology officers.

UCLA is also working to prevent illegal exchange of copyrighted material. Messages about file-sharing have been placed in various publications, on the cable television network in the residence halls and in the residence hall computer labs, said Kent Wada, director of information technology policy at the Office of Information Technology.

“We have certainly done more education than we ever have before. ... We want to balance the rights of the copyright holders with the privacy of the UCLA community,” Wada said.

A year ago, universities and colleges saw concerted negative pressure to stop file-sharing from Legislature members who saw institutions of higher education and their high-speed Internet connections as a major cause of illegal downloading. Within the last few months, however, there has been a shifting sense that file-sharing is not taking place just at colleges and universities, Wada said.

Part of this viewpoint change may be because faster Internet connection speeds are available in homes across the United States, increasing the ability to download movies.

As a result, the movie industry is intensifying their efforts to protect copyrights.

“It’s pretty clear that concerns are starting to rise significantly,” said Jim Davis, associate vice chancellor of the OIT.

UCLA has been looking at ways to rapidly process notifications of copyright infringement and make the process more effective.

One way is dealing with the machine on which the copyrighted material is located separately from the machine’s owner, who would go through a judicial process.

As a result, the owner of the machine is no longer automatically assumed to be the offender, as there have been cases in which people unknowingly had illegal material on their machines because their machines had been broken into.

“Then we can deal with the copyrighted material effectively and still protect the individual’s rights for privacy,” Davis said.

Despite such efforts made by colleges and universities, the MPAA loses about $3.5 billion annually from hard goods piracy such as illegal video tapes. This estimate does not include monetary losses associated with illegal file-sharing because such numbers are difficult to quantify.

Although these monetary losses will affect people working on movies, Grossman believes the losses will ultimately affect audiences the most.

“What will wind up happening is if there are fewer people working on a film (and) fewer films being made, people will have fewer movie choices and the options won’t look as good. The things we’re accustomed to seeing on the big screen won’t be there anymore,” he said.

Illegal file-sharing has not yet decimated the movie industry to the extent it has affected the music industry, mainly because movie files are much larger than music files, making them harder to download, Grossman said.

The quality of the downloaded product may also explain why illegal file-sharing has affected the music industry more than the movie industry.

“(My roommates and I) take turns buying movies and pretty much share them. ... I don’t download movies because it annoys me when a movie has really bad quality and I have to struggle to know what something is in the movie,” said third-year electrical engineering student Jonathan Harris.

The music industry alleviated the problem of illegal file-sharing of copyrighted materials by implementing legal music downloading applications such as Apple’s iTunes program.

The movie industry has created similar applications such as CinemaNow and Movielink. These new types of technology enable copyright holders to protect their movies, Grossman said.