The Motion Picture Association Of America has reached a deal with the founder of BitTorrent, the file sharing technology which allows the transfer of much bigger files (and which is, therefore, particularly popular for the transfer of movies). Cram Cohen has said he will set up a filter on the search engine of his BitTorrent.com website that filters out any copyrighted content being shared via the technology. Announcing that move, Cohen told reporters: "BitTorrent Inc. discourages the use of its technology for distributing films without a license to do so. As such, we are pleased to work with the film industry to remove unauthorised content from BitTorrent.com's search engine."
Of course such a move won't stop file sharers from using the highly decentralised technology to share large music and movie files, although it will remove links to illegal content from one of the most comprehensive directories of content available via BitTorrent file sharing. Whether that will help the MPAA in their attempts to combat the sharing of movies online in any way remains to be seen.