Sellers of Pirated DVDs Targeted

The Motion Picture Assn. of America on Tuesday announced a crackdown on online movie bootleggers, with lawsuits filed against nine ventures that allegedly sold pirated titles through online auctioneer EBay Inc.

Meanwhile, the recording industry has shut down the Internet’s most comprehensive source of CD covers, which enabled consumers and bootleggers to obtain free, digital copies of CD artwork and liner notes.

The actions reflect the growing reach and intensity of the movie and music industries’ fight against online piracy.

The MPAA’s lawsuits are its first against alleged infringers on EBay, and the Recording Industry Assn. of America’s success on the CD artwork issue came after several months of trying.

Online auction houses, and particularly San Jose-based EBay, have been an increasingly popular distribution point for DVD pirates. The MPAA has asked auction sites more than 40,000 times in the last two years to stop the sale of DVDs that appear to have been pirated, with the number of requests doubling from 2001 to 2002.

Tuesday, the MPAA announced that it was seeking injunctions to stop piracy by DVD and videotape sellers in California and seven other states.

EBay records indicate that several of the sellers had drawn complaints for delivering pirated material, while others offered discs of major motion pictures that could be played on any region’s DVD players -- a feature not found on legitimate DVDs.

The MPAA also cautioned online movie buyers to be on the lookout for pirated discs. In particular, the trade group said, discs for movies that are still in theaters probably have been pirated, as well as discs with incomplete or shoddy packaging.

One of the sellers targeted by the MPAA, Todd Aspinwall of Windsor Locks, Conn., said he had bought all his discs from other EBay sellers and had no idea there was anything wrong with them.

“If they’re going to go after me, they should go after the guys I get [the DVDs] from,” Aspinwall said.

The RIAA’s target was CDCovers.cc, an Israeli-based site that has offered artwork for CDs, DVDs and video games as well as mobile-phone ring tones.

Matt Oppenheim, the RIAA’s senior vice president of business and legal affairs, said the association and its overseas counterpart, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, have knocked the site offline in several countries, only to see it relocate and reopen.

Late last month, however, CDCovers.cc raised the white flag.

“It’s been a great adventure but we cannot afford this anymore,” a spokesman for CDCovers.cc said in a note on the site.