By Mike Ellis, Senior Vice President and Asia Pacific Regional Director, Motion Picture Association (MPA) Dec 10, 2006, 16:35 GMT
Today the films of members of the Motion Picture Association of America are shown in theaters in more than 150 countries. Tens of thousand s of their films are also sold or rented in home video format to consumers in nearly every country of the world.
The MPA works internationally – including within 14 countries and territories around the Asia Pacific region – to fight piracy and promote and protect intellectual property rights. This worldwide activity has one principal purpose: to develop and support the film industry worldwide. When we say “the film industry”, we do not mean simply America’s film industry. We mean the film businesses in all nations.
A recent global study examining the impact of motion picture piracy and consumer behavior underscored the importance of intellectual property to economic growth worldwide and revealed the extent of damage caused by copyright theft to creative industries all around the world. The study, undertaken by the independent research firm LEK Consulting on behalf of the MPA which represents major US motion picture companies, showed that Internet piracy cost the film industry globally US$7.1 billion of potential revenue in 2005.
It has been estimated that over 90 percent of traffic worldwide on peer-to-peer (P2P) computer networks illegally infringes the copyrights of movie, music and software businesses. P2P networks also play host to large-scale trafficking in pornography, including child pornography and provide opportunities for identity thieves to obtain personal and financial information from network users who in most cases have no idea that their data is vulnerable.
Internet piracy also includes what is known as auction piracy, the sale of pirated CD’s and DVD’s via Internet auction. In 2005 the MPA’s operations in the Asia Pacific region seized 3,362 optical disc burners, an increase of 220 percent over the preceding year.
The driver of this move to burner labs (from factory replication) has been both economic and a response to increased anti-piracy enforcement. Burner labs can contain dozens of low-cost burners and are often located in apartments and small retail premises, making them difficult to locate. Like replication factories, burner labs are capable of producing tens of millions of pirate DVD-Rs or CD-Rs per year, yet are inexpensive and easy to set up, and if raided, easily and quickly replaceable.
Governments and copyright owners employ a multi-pronged approach to fighting piracy, including educating people about the consequences of piracy, working to ensure movies are available legally using advanced technology and taking enforcement action against Internet thieves and optic disc pirates, rooting out pirate operations around the world.
The foundation of any campaign against unauthorized downloading must be education; people must be made to understand the cost – to businesses, to jobs, to national economies, to the development of national creative industries – of stealing intellectual property.
Education about Internet piracy is critical because many P2P users are unaware that P2P file sharing can open their computers to the Internet and to potentially millions of other Internet users, with very few controls. In many countries, individuals and organizations have seen valuable data uploaded from their computers without their knowledge resulting in significant damage.
All around the world, legislatures are trying to implement and update intellectual property protection laws to keep pace with technological development; Asia is no different and each country is at a different stage in terms of implementing and updating these laws.
The MPA is working every day, all around the Asia Pacific region and the world to help lawmakers better understand and protect copyright, to help law enforcement agencies and officers better identify and prosecute copyright theft and to help consumers understand that IP theft is no different than theft of physical property.
In addition, we maintain active litigation programs in many countries aimed at defending our member companies’ copyrights in the courts against unauthorized and illegal infringement. For the most part, our targets are not only shutting down their operations but also paying our member companies damages.
Because the Internet infrastructure is unevenly developed around the Asia Pacific region, in some countries the treat posed to the entertainment industry by Internet piracy is not seen as either imminent or particularly worrisome. That will change, more than likely at “internet speed”.
The industry must be prepared to address this threat. To develop a strategy and an action plan, cooperation will be required – not only within individual countries, but also with industry organizations and governments regionally and globally, where the threat from Internet piracy may be more advanced and where strategies may be already in place to address the threat.
Reprinted with permission - CineAsia 2006 Program Guide
Your Talkback on this Story