India, one of the world’s biggest film markets, also has one of the bigger piracy rates in the world and the Hollywood and Bollywood studios want to try to put an end to it.
The MPAA and seven Indian companies have signed a coalition intended to fight piracy, with the group working with movie theaters to try to shutdown camcorder recordings, as well as working with ISPs to shut down the ease of Internet piracy.
The industry group would not reveal the budget but did say it would come from its members, the major studios. The MPAA has anti-piracy coalitions in the U.S., the EU and Hong Kong.
“People are becoming more of the same mind,” adds Dan Glickman, the chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America. “The Indian film industry now understands their product is getting stolen at significant rates.”
According to an Ernst & Young study, piracy cost the Indian economy $959 million and 571,000 jobs in 2008.
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Despite massive campaigns to inform the public of the dangers of piracy and its effect on the world economies,the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has posted on their website that 2007 saw new all-time highs for both domestic and global box office sales.
The MPAA’s own data figures show that the global market grew almost 5 percent$26.6 billion USD, and the US market grew 5.4 percent to $9.6 billion USD.
“From the threat and eventual reality of a writer’s strike to the global impact of film theft to concerns over the economy, the film industry faced significant challenges in 2007,” stated Dan Glickman, Chairman and CEO of the MPAA. “But, ultimately, we got our Hollywood ending. Once again, diverse, quality films and the timeless allure of the movie house proved a winning combination with consumers around the world.”
According to recent studies by the Institute for Public Innovation, movie piracy costs the US economy $20.5 billion annually including revenue loss and “related measures of economic performance.” The study goes as far as to say that the movie industry could have added 45,000 new jobs had it not been for piracy. Funny how BO sales can grow at a steady pace despite the fact that the economy is seeing a “$20.5 billion USD annual loss” right?
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According to a Department of Justice press statement, Daniel Dove, administrator for the defunct EliteTorrents torrent tracker has been found guilty by a jury of his peers and now faces 10 years in jail for criminal copyright infringement.
To give a quick refresher on the situation, EliteTorrents, for at least a 3 year period ended 2005, was the most popular public torrent tracker in the US and was the site responsible for the pre-release of the workprint version of “Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” before its theatrical release. It was all downhill from there for the site and its 3 administrators. The MPAA, FBI, local police and US Customs all came together as part of Operation D-Elite and forced the site off line while arresting the administrators. Scott McCausland and Grant Stanley, the other administrators, pleaded guilty to their crimes and were sentenced to 5 months of prison.
“The jury was presented with evidence that Dove was an administrator of a small group of Elite Torrents members known as “Uploaders,” who were responsible for supplying pirated content to the group,” the Department of Justice press release states. “The evidence showed that Dove recruited members who had very high-speed Internet connections, usually at least 50 times faster than a typical high-speed residential Internet connection, to become Uploaders. The evidence also showed that Dove operated a high-speed server, which he used to distribute pirated content to the Uploaders.”
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