Film Studios Unite To Beat Piracy

Six major Hollywood studios have formed a joint venture to protect their movies from the threat of electronic theft. Motion Picture Laboratories will research and create new technologies to stop the unauthorised distribution of films, particularly via the internet. The company, also named Movielabs, will have offices in Los Angeles and a $30m (£16.6m) budget in its first two years.

Dan Glickman, president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), said the non-profit company would "help the entertainment industry adopt new means of fighting piracy and protecting copyrights". Planned projects include devising ways to jam camcorders being used to record movies in cinemas illegally, and developing methods of detecting illegal content sharing on peer-to-peer networks.

The studios pooling their resources are Walt Disney, Sony, Paramount, Warner Bros, Universal and 20th Century Fox.