Film Studios Form Group to Fight Piracy

The six major movie studios have formed a joint venture to research and create technologies to protect films and videos from piracy, industry officials said.

The nonprofit group will be called Motion Picture Laboratories Inc. and will have a budget of more than $30 million for its first two years.

Numerous private companies have already started work on methods to jam camcorders used to illegally tape movies in theaters or prevent consumers from sending copies of films released on DVDs over the Internet.

The new organization will help develop those ideas more quickly to cut the billions of dollars the motion picture industry estimates is lost each year because of unauthorized copying.