MPAA Sues First Movie Swappers

The MPAA, following the lead of the RIAA, have decided to sue their customers -- customers that use peer-to-peer networks to share movie files without permission. There is debate however on whether file swappers are hurting the movie industry -- just as there is evidence that file swappers weren't hurting the music industry, but was having the opposite effect. In the last two years, according to BigChampagne -- an online media-metrics firm -- use of peer-to-peer networks have risen 22% in the US. The RIAA however, have used other numbers in their publicity campaigns to demonstrate that suing is working -- they've used numbers from Pew and Nielsen to show that file sharing use has dropped. Pew however, doesn't track users under the age of 18 and Nielsen doesn't track all P2P networks.