Pirates Make New Use of Old Technology

While record companies and film studios train their legal fire on Internet file-sharing networks such as Napster and Morpheus, online pirates have been making heavy use of a 14-year-old technology invented to help far-flung researchers gather online to chat.

Internet Relay Chat has become the tool of choice for many consumers who make unauthorized copies of music, movies, pictures, books and software online. Taking advantage of ultra-fast Internet connections at universities and corporations, pirates use IRC channels to distribute increasingly high-quality copies of films--including some apparently made from the studios’ high-definition masters.

Ken Jacobsen, director of worldwide anti-piracy efforts for the Motion Picture Assn. of America, said his organization has yet to sue anyone using the channels but has referred some of the evidence it’s gathered to law enforcement.

The switch to IRC demonstrates the fluid nature of piracy on the Internet. As copyright holders start to rein in one illegal distribution channel, others steam ahead.

Internet Relay Chat hasn’t attracted a mainstream audience because it’s much harder to use than such wildly popular file-sharing services as Morpheus and the free version of Napster. Users must find and sign on to a channel, then use specific and not necessarily intuitive commands to search for and download files.

Nevertheless, IRC has become a rich source for a variety of published material, including movies that have yet to be released commercially on VHS or DVD. Some of these files come from camcorders sneaked into a cinema and pointed at the screen, but others are “ripped” from DVDs sent by studios to film industry professionals voting on the Oscars.

Bruce Forest, an online piracy expert at consulting firm KPE, said he’s recently started seeing extremely high-quality movie files on IRC channels, offering more picture detail than the files made from DVDs. These include copies of movies yet to be released on DVD, such as “A Beautiful Mind” and “Lord of the Rings.”

He speculated that the source was someone with access to the film libraries of the major studios.

Vidius Inc., an Internet security company, has found a handful of extremely high-quality movie files on IRC channels that apparently leaked out of an editing or mastering house, said Derek Broes, Vidius’ chief operating officer.

Jacobsen said he hadn’t heard any reports of high-definition movies making their way onto IRC. But noting how large such files would be--about 1.5 gigabytes, or 500 times the size of an MP3 music file--he said, “There’s very few people that are going to be able to download it.”

In a related issue, the Morpheus peer-to-peer network remained out of commission Thursday, two days after it inexplicably collapsed. Steve Griffin, chief executive of Morpheus’ parent company, said the company hoped to have new software by the end of the week that would enable users to resume their file sharing.

A federal judge in Los Angeles is scheduled to hear a motion by Morpheus’ lawyers Monday to dismiss part of the copyright infringement lawsuit brought against the company by studios and record labels.

In addition to seeking legal remedies, studios and record companies have been slowly developing legitimate, fee-based alternatives to the free sources of music and movies online. Sony Music Entertainment on Thursday became the first major record company to strike a deal with a file-sharing service, giving CenterSpan Communications permission to distribute encrypted songs by Sony artists.

CenterSpan is a wholesaler, selling other companies a secure peer-to-peer network that lets subscribers copy music and movie files from each other’s computers. The company agreed to pay Sony at least $2 million over the next two years, give it about 5% of CenterSpan’s stock and provide warrants for roughly 3% more.

Although the deal is effective immediately, CenterSpan has yet to find any buyers for its peer-to-peer technology. By contrast, Napster Inc. has already started trials with its new, secure peer-to-peer network but hasn’t won any deals yet.