When popular BitTorrent tracker sites were targeted last December, some wondered if the tracker logs and other data would fall into the hands of the Motion Picture Association of America. The answer was revealed yesterday when the MPAA filed 286 lawsuits against US residents, and the information that led to the defendants' identification was obtained from torrent site logs.

So did the torrent site operators give up the goods? It looks like that may be the case, depending on how you interpret a comment made by an MPAA executive.

"Internet movie thieves be warned: You have no friends in the online community when you are engaging in copyright theft," MPAA Senior Vice President John Malcom said in a statement.

When LokiTorrent was shut down in February, a Texas court ordered that its logs be turned over to the MPAA. However, the MPAA states that the latest lawsuits did not stem from that particular enforcement action. Don't be surprised if there is another round of lawsuits in the next few months tied to the LokiTorrent takedown.

It has been a rough summer for the movie industry. Ticket sales have been down as the moviegoing public has been turned off by the poor quality of Hollywood's recent offerings along with high ticket prices, movies that don't start at the advertised times, and outrageous concession prices. In short, the movie industry is finding itself in the same boat that the music industry did a few years ago.

Although the MPAA will continue to attack file-sharing and likely continue down the same litigious road the RIAA has traveled, they're not fooling anyoneleast of all, themselvesif they think continued crackdowns on illicit downloads are going to help fix what's wrong with the movie industry. The problems go far deeper than that, and it's only through rethinking their whole business model, acknowledging and even embracing changing consumer preferences, and doing some things differently that they have any hope of reversing their fortunes.