If you go to EliteTorrents.org today, you will find that its sleek grey design is replaced by the logos of the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security alongside a bold announcement: "This site has been permanently shut down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Individuals involved in the operation and use of the Elite Torrents network are under investigation for criminal copyright infringement."
Dan Glickman the president of the MPAA declared the closure of EliteTorrents was "bad news for internet movie thieves and good news for preserving the magic of the movies."
It's fair to say that the movie industry is rarely first in line for a sympathy vote. It claims that piracy costs it US$3.5 billion a year, a figure that doesn't include the losses from internet file sharing. However, the very thing that lays behind the dramatic increase in piracy -- the arrival of the DVD -- has also brought the industry some quite spectacular dividends. The DVD market in the US last year was worth US$21.2 billion, with the retail market alone up year on year by 33 per cent. And it continues to grow every year.
The precise impact of P2P on sales is also a moot point. While the industry believes it has a detrimental effect, this week's report from the OECD on digital music admitted that "digital piracy may be an important impediment to the success of legitimate online content markets" but "it is difficult to establish a basis to prove a causal relationship between the 20 percent fall in overall revenues experienced by the music industry between 1999 and 2003."
The other debate is whether BitTorrent itself (and, by extension, Cohen) is responsible for piracy. No one is arguing whether or not copyright infringement happens, but whether by banning the software that allows it you are also stifling a new and exci-ting technology.
At the moment, the US Supreme Court is making its mind up in the case of MGM vs. Grokster -- where the issue is whether a piece of software itself can be held responsible for the piracy that is committed using it.
The landmark case in this area goes back to 1984 when the movie industry tried to kill off the video recorder. The defen-dant back then was Sony which now, as a studio owner, finds itself on the other side of the divide. Whatever develops in the courts, it is clear that BitTorrent offers much more than movie piracy; it might change the future of TV too.
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