Movie honchos battle Internet pirates

LOS ANGELES, July 13 (UPI) -- Major Hollywood movie studios are suing to stop the Web site ShowStash from allegedly making movie piracy on the Internet easy.

"ShowStash is a one-stop shop for copyright infringement and the operators' sole purpose is to disseminate content that has been illegally reproduced and distributed," John Malcolm, executive vice president and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations for the Motion Picture Association of America, said in a news release. "(Our) goal is to put these movie theft 'entrepreneurs' out of business for good."

In its lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, MPAA charges ShowStash contributes to, and profits from, massive copyright infringement, posting, organizing and indexing links to protected content found on the Internet that consumers can then view-on demand on the site.

ShowStash says it is not responsible for any content linked to, or referred to, on its site.

"No video files are hosted on our servers," it says in a disclaimer. "They are merely indexed in a fashion similar to Google and other popular search engines. Copyright infringement notices should be directed to the responsible hosting party."

MPAA contends the movie industry lost $18.2 billion worldwide in 2005 due to piracy.