Area men sued for pirating movies

Two area men and an anti-piracy lawsuit against them are at the center of a dispute between Internet giant Google and several large media corporations.

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that several major Hollywood studios have accused Google Inc. of aiding access to pirated materials through signing suspect sites as advertising partners. New Corp., Viacom, Sony Corp., NBC Universal, Time Warner Inc. and the Walt Disney Co. have all made the accusation, the Journal reported, based on the statements made in a civil lawsuit filed by several studios coordinated by the Motion Picture Association of America.

The lawsuit, filed in October 2005 in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York, sought damages from Luke Sample, 26, of Cape Girardeau and Brandon Drury, 26, of Scott City, for helping others infringe on copyright protections. The men operated two Web sites that allowed users to download videos from peer-to-peer file-sharing networks for a $29.95 yearly fee, the Journal reported. The sites reached an advertising agreement with Google worth $809,000 of the two sites' $1.1 million in revenue between 2003 and 2005. Drury and Sample said in sworn statements that Google also supplied them with keywords with terms like "bootleg movie download" and "pirated," the Journal reported.

Sample said Tuesday the two sides in the lawsuit had reached an agreement but that he could not comment on the nature of the agreement.

Calls to Drury, owner of local recording studio Echo Echo Studios, were not answered Tuesday. Elizabeth Kaltman, spokeswoman for the MPAA, confirmed that the suit has been settled out of court and that the terms of the settlement are confidential. The lawsuit was settled last month, said Sample.

Google is negotiating with several big media companies over the unauthorized use of copyrighted material on the YouTube Web site, which Google recently purchased. In recent years Internet piracy has become a phenomenon seen as a menace by media companies, particularly film studios and record companies who say piracy has cost them billions of dollars in business.

Asked to comment, Google provided the following statement to the Southeast Missourian:

"We prohibit advertisers from using our advertising program to promote the sale of copyright infringing materials. We are continually improving our systems to screen out ads that violate these policies. Hundreds of thousands of advertisers responsibly abide by our ad content policies and we're committed to preventing those who don't from using our program."

Google did not respond when asked about the Journal report that the company provided keywords seeming to encourage piracy.

msanders@semissourian.com

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