The motion Picture Association of America is to offer a tool to help users locate illegally downloaded files on their system, the organization said today. The software will be able to scan the system and find all sorts of music and movie titles stored on a computer, along with illegal peer-to-peer software, according to a report in PCWorld. Once found, the program can remove the files if the user would like. The tool is aimed at parents who want to keep their kids out of trouble, since the MPAA concurrently launched a new wave of lawsuits against movie sharers.
Quite how the program will distinguish between illegal and legal MP3s is unclear at the moment. Plenty of legal MP3 download sites are around that simply download the file to your hard drive much as with peer-to-peer schemes. It is also clear that peer-to-peer can be used to download legal material, so the deleting of these programs by this tool is pretty questionable.