The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has donated more than $900,000 to a university run anti-piracy programme.

According to reports, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh received a $912,000 donation from the MPAA.

The funding will go towards CMU's Initiative for Digital Entertainment Analytics (IDEA) scheme, which researches various piracy-related topics.

It brings the MPAA's total investment in the IDEA programme to more than $1 million over the past two years, after it made a $100,000 investment last year.

The latest donation was reported by news website TorrentFreak, and was discovered in the MPAA's tax filing covering 2013.

CMU did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the news. The MPAA, which represents Hollywood’s six major film studios, sees academic research as key to its efforts to ensure that copyright protections remain in place.

"We want to enlist the help of academics from around the world to provide new insight on a range of issues facing the content industry in the digital age," chief executive Chris Dodd previously said.

Dodd was speaking in June after the MPAA launched a scheme in which it offered $200,000 grants to academics to undertake research into piracy.

The MPAA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Source: WIPR)