The Motion Picture Association, or MPA, has contacted top torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, Kickass Torrentz, Torrentz and others and given them 24 hours to shutdown under threat of possible legal action.

The Motion Picture Association, the European branch of the American MPAA, a consortium of the six largest movie studios, (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures; Paramount Pictures Corporation; Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.; Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation; Universal City Studios LLC; and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.), has taken a new step in its attempts to stop illegal file sharing by users of torrent sites like The Pirate Bay and Kickass Torrents.

Rather than take the more indirect approach it has been favoring, which involves contacting ISPs who are then directed to warn and potentially punish offenders from infringing ISP addresses, or search engines such as Google who are directed to remove listings, the MPA is emailing a large number of file sharing sites and threatening to "pursue all remedies available", which includes legal action, if they do not shut down the claimed illegal activities in 24 hours.

The emails come from the MPA's Vice-President Global Content Protection, Internet Operations, Jan van Voorn, and read in part, "This Notice requires you to immediately (within 24 hours) take effective measures to end and prevent further copyright infringement. All opportunities provided by the Website to download, stream or otherwise obtain access to the Entertainment Content should be disabled permanently."

It doesn't appear as if the sites are taking the threat seriously however, as all major torrent and file sharing sites are still up and running, with no signs of any shutdown imminent. One small linking site, micromkv.com, which is not well known or frequently visited, has apparently shut down as a result of the notice, but that won't make even a small dent in the activity the MPA is attempting to prevent.

The MPA has not only made reference to copyright infringement of the actual entertainment content contained in the files shared on the sites, but also to movie poster and artwork displayed and used by the sites to promote the latest releases on offer.

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