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By Ben King, 7 June 2002 11:30

NEWS Iran-based film sharing site Film88 is apparently still up and running despite attempts by the US film industry to close it down. US wires reported that the Motion Picture Association, which represents the interests of Hollywood studios globally, had contacted Film88.com's ISP, Netherlands-based Trueserver. A report by CNet stated that the site was down, but it now seems to be back up. We successfully watched the opening credits for the black-and-white Western Cimarron directed by Wesley Ruggles, which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1931. The site offers an impressive selection of movies for rent, including the first four Star Wars movies, from $1 to $1.50 depending on the bandwidth of the stream. It still appears to be having technical trouble - attempts to watch any of the Star Wars movies produced a string of error messages and another invitation to watch the compelling Cimarron, but the site still seems to be live. The US movie industry is generally very quick to shut down sites offering movies for download. The Taiwan-based site movies88.com, which also sold films for a dollar, was shut down in February following pressure from the MPA. However, Iran, recently described as part of the "axis of evil" by US president George W. Bush, is less likely to co-operate with American copyright watchdogs. It appears that Film88 has found a new ISP - the site's homepage now bears the following message: "Dear Valuable Users, Our site is READY now, but we got to wait for few hours for our new lines to take place. However, you can enter from HERE. "Please take note that the lines are extremely SLOW. We feel sorry for our contractor whose proxy/caching was blocked because of somebody's reaction. (Without Court Order AGAIN!!) "Seems like the Terrorist is identified!! Regards, Film88 The LA Times newspaper reported that the organisers of Film88.com were hoping to share their revenues with the film industry. They quoted a representative as saying: "Our intention is to pay a percentage of the rental price to copyright owners directly. [Film88 represents] an additional market for the copyright owners without affecting their conventional income (such as box-office income)." The MPA does not see it this way, the paper said.