Stopping piraters from downloading movies illegally is at the very top of the MPAA's task list.  Given that, they have gone to some great lengths to enforce their zero tolerance policy, and an exclusive article over at Wired today points this out.  The article starts out "Promises of Hollywood fame and fortune persuaded a young hacker to betray former associates in the BitTorrent scene to Tinseltown's anti-piracy lobby." This situation involving Robert Anderson is just one of many examples of what the MPAA is doing to try and stop piracy, but does it really do them any good?

Videohybrid is essentially an illegal sharing ring for movies, tv, shows, anime, and cartoons. In some sense it is similar to Peekvid, except that they let users request videos. Registered users can then vote up requests in a Digg-like fashion, and the first person who fulfills the request earns all of the points it has racked up.

I still can’t get over the lengths that the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) will go to try and catch movie thieves red-handed. On their website they prominently display how many counterfeit DVDs have been seized by authorities. At the moment it’s 81 Million, and they say:

The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) is having a field-day with this one! They’re after Peekvid and YouTVPC, looking to shut down both sites for streaming copyrighted material for free.  Both sites have become pretty popular recently (53,000 unique visitors per day for Peekvid), which helps to explain why the MPAA is going after them.

We already know about the RIAA’s list of shame for top piracy schools, but it looks like the MPAA is following right along with their own list, naming the top 25 schools where students are violating copyright laws.

I haven't been able to find information on the largest lawsuit in history but I'm sure this one is right up at the top. The RIAA (yes, I was just as shocked as you ;) ) is suing the website AllofMP3.com on behalf of EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music, and Warner Music in the amount of $150,000 for each of the 11 million songs that were downloaded from June to October of 2006.