US movie studios are trying to enlist parents in their fight against piracy. Their trade body, the MPAA, has made software available on its website that allows parents to see whether their children are using file-sharing programs to download what it calls “potentially infringing motion pictures”.
The MPAA’s Parent File Scan software lists any peer-to-peer file-sharing applications, along with any MP4 movie files and MP3 or WAV sound files it finds. It then gives parents the opportunity to delete them. Doing so could be costly, however, as the software makes no attempt to distinguish between purchased and illegal content.
