Anti-Piracy in Asia Pacific

Illegal motion picture and television piracy is a thriving international enterprise. The Motion Picture As-sociation (MPA) estimates that its member companies lose approximately US$1.2 billion each year in potential revenue in the Asia-Pacific region alone, and US$6.1 billion globally. In many countries, MPA member company losses are far outstripped by production, theatrical exhibition, home video distribution losses to local industry, as well as losses to governments in uncollected tax revenues. Consumer spending losses on filmed entertainment worldwide are estimated at US$18.2 billion.

In 2007, the MPA’s operations in the Asia-Pacific region investigated more than 36,200 cases of piracy and assisted law enforcement officials in conducting nearly 13,000 raids. These activities resulted in the seizure of more than 31 million illegal optical discs, 40 factory optical disc production lines and 6,400 optical disc burners, as well as the initiation of more than 10,000 legal actions.

THE MPA's ROLE

The MPA represents the interests of six international producers and distributors of theatrical films, home video products, and television programming: The Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures Corporation, Sony Pictures Releasing International, Twentieth Century Fox International Corporation, Universal International Films, and Warner Bros Pictures International, a division of Warner Bros. Pic-tures Inc.

The MPA, on behalf of its member companies, directs a comprehensive worldwide anti-piracy program. Begun in the U.S. in 1975, the program has several objectives: to strengthen industry security meas-ures, to strengthen existing copyright protection through legislative activity, to assist local governments in the investigation and prosecution of piracy cases, and to provide technical support in the criminal and civil litigation generated by such investigations.

The MPA directs its Asia-Pacific anti-piracy activities from a regional office in Singapore. Worldwide headquarters are in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, California. Additionally, more than a dozen anti-piracy offices represent the MPA around the region.

On a worldwide basis, entire markets have been transformed from almost universal piracy to legitimate businesses for both American film suppliers as well as other foreign and local filmmakers. MPA ‘source investigations’, coupled with security measures, have helped identify and expose international piracy networks that reap enormous profits from stealing the intellectual property of American filmmakers. These profits come at the expense of U.S. studios as well as undermining film producers, distributors, exhibitors and retailers of all nations.

THE ECONOMIC PICTURE

Moviemaking is a risky business. Contrary to popular belief, moviemaking is not always profitable. Only one in 10 films ever recovers its investment from domestic (U.S.) theatrical exhibition, and only four out of 10 movies ever recoups its initial investment.

In 2007, MPA member companies released 179 films, and the average amount MPA members spent per feature film, including negative and domestic marketing costs was US$106.6 million. The interna-tional market is vitally important to the success of U.S. films.

Today, American movies and TV shows are exported to more than 140 nations. The losses suffered to piracy are not only losses to MPA member companies, but also represent a significant loss to local economies. On average, two- thirds of the licensed sales revenue generated overseas stays in the indi-vidual countries with one-third going to the governments and one-third to local businesses.

Like every business, the motion picture industry relies on its profits to invest in future products. As pi-racy negatively impacts profitability, there is less available investment capital. Less capital means fewer movies can be financed, which means jobs are not created and local goods and services are not con-sumed. The effects of piracy are felt throughout all sectors of a nation’s economy.

In the U.S., the film and television production industry creates more than 1.3 million jobs, generates US$30.24 billion in wages to workers, results in US$30.2 billion in revenue for 160,000 vendors, and generates US$10 billion in taxes. Copyright industries in total – movies, home video and television programming, music and sound recordings, books, video games and software – create new jobs at three times the rate of the rest of the economy and add a value of US$1,388.1 billion to the economy, or more than 11 percent of the nation’s total GDP.

THE LAW

By and large, the countries in the Asia-Pacific region have strong anti-piracy legislation. In addition to criminal remedies, copyright owners may also file civil lawsuits against infringers. Worldwide, more than 64 nations have ratified the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright Treaty, which sets international copyright standards in the Internet era. The MPA and its affiliated organizations work to strengthen the copyright laws, when necessary, and suggest appropriate penalties as part of copy-right reform. In some parts of the world where copyright laws are weak or non-existent, successful charges have been brought against pirates under other statutes, such as stolen goods, trademark viola-tions, smuggling, and failure to pay customs duties. Although the laws are generally good, there is a lack of deterrent sentencing in almost all countries in the region. The MPA is working with the govern-ments of these countries to increase the penalties for copyright violations.

INTERNET

Online motion picture piracy is the unauthorized use of copyrighted motion pictures on the Internet. It is illegal to sell, trade, lease, distribute, upload for transmission, transmit or publicly perform motion pic-tures without the consent of the motion pictures’ copyright owner.

In many ways, the Internet represents the distribution dream for copyright owners – true video-on-demand via high-quality streaming or super-fast high-bandwidth downloads to the home or to an indi-vidual. However, it is equally clear that technology can be used as both a positive and a negative social force. Thanks to technology, movie pirates can now redistribute perfect copies of their stolen content, worldwide, within minutes of obtaining it.

Online piracy is a rapidly growing problem. The MPA’s Internet Anti-Piracy program investigates all forms of online piracy including: Downloadable Media of which Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file-sharing is a popular platform for abuse , Streaming Media such as web video sites, Hard Goods Piracy, and illegal Circumvention Devices. The MPA works closely with the on-line community to develop safeguards against the unauthorized use and distribution of film industry product on the Internet.

DOWNLOADABLE MEDIA

Downloadable media refers to online formats that allow motion pictures to be compressed and up-loaded for direct download onto a computer. Pirates use downloadable media formats such as DivX, ASF and MPEG to illegally offer motion pictures to other Internet users. Typically, a pirate host will use illegal DVD copies of motion pictures to create digital copies that are recorded into computer files. Us-ing online communication avenues, including Peer-to-Peer (P2P) platforms, chat rooms, Internet Relay Channels (IRC), FTP sites, newsgroups, file swapping utilities and web sites, the host offers these files to other Internet users, who then download the files onto their own computers.

P2P Internet piracy is a fast-growing online piracy problem facing copyright holders which the MPAA estimates costs its member studios US$3.8 billion a year. Losses due to Internet piracy are estimated at US$2.3 and growing. This form of piracy is usually linked to so-called “hard goods” piracy involving illegal videotape and optical-disc copies as most pirate movies online originate from either being ripped from a legitimate DVD or uploaded from unauthorised camcord copies of movies still on theatrical re-lease. Moreover, once uploaded, most are then pirated back into in hard-goods form)

Almost every theatrical release of MPAA members’ motion pictures in recent years has been pirated over the Internet and put on P2P file-trading networks within days of its first theatrical release, usually from illegal videotaping in theaters. In turn, hard-goods pirates have used those illegal digital copies to make illegal tapes and discs of the movies. Internet traffic management firm ipoque has estimated that 48-80% of Internet download traffic, compared to 10-26% of web browsing, depending on the country. Some measurement points experienced P2P shares of over 95% of traffic at certain times. From a user standpoint, only about 20% of the Internet users are file sharers and thus responsible for up to 80% of the overall Internet traffic. The P2P research firm Big Champagne has estimated that the average number of files available for download at any given moment on P2P networks worldwide is in the bil-lions.

In Asia-Pacific, P2P piracy is a significant concern in countries with high broadband penetration rates such as South Korea and Japan, and is a threat in all countries with growing broadband user bases. In 2005, a Hong Kong court jailed a man for three months for illegally distributing MPA member company films via the Internet in the world’s first criminal case against a user of BitTorrent technology. Since then there have been numerous criminal convictions for P2P piracy around the region, including South Ko-rea, Japan and Taiwan.

STREAMING MEDIA

Streaming media are technologies that allow for the transmission or transfer of data that is delivered to the user or viewer in a steady stream in near real time. Streaming is a more efficient format for those who do not have sufficient bandwidth to download media files. Streaming allows data from the file to be opened and watched while the remaining data and the file are still transmitting. Many legitimate sites in Asia-Pacific stream their shows for video-on-demand online.

Streaming technology has paved the way for an increase in the popularity of web videos because it allows viewers to enjoy video and movie content directly on a website. One of the most popular web video sites is YouTube, which hosts user generated videos. User generated videos fall under the larger category of User Generated Content (UGC) or User Created Content (UCC). In its purest form UGC or UCC as the name indicates refer to content generated / created by web users. In Asia Pacific, there is a growing trend of websites similar to YouTube that also host such user generated content, particularly video content. Users would upload their own generated video onto these sites for public sharing with other Internet users.

It is unfortunate that increasingly UGC sites which are intended for Internet users to share and express their creativity have been also used as a platform for distribution of pirated content. There is a considerable number of UGC sites that now find themselves carrying pirated movies alongside genuine user generated content and this strays from the original definition and intent of UGC sites.

To foster an online environment that promotes the promises and benefits of UGC services and protects the rights of copyright owners, MPA and the content industry collaborated with active UGC sites to come up with UGC principles to address infringements on such sites. The principles advocate the use of content recognition technologies during the upload process to detect and prevent upload of infringing content. In coming together around the practices outlined in the principles document, copyright owners and UGC services recognize that they share several important objectives: the elimination of infringing content on UGC services; the encouragement of uploads of authorized user-generated audio and video content; the accommodation of fair use of copyrighted content on UGC services; and, the protection of legitimate interests of user privacy. We believe that abiding by these practices will help UGC services and copyright owners achieve a more robust, healthy and content-rich online experience for all

continues...

Back to top

what's legal? what isn't?

Manufacturing, selling or distributing motion pictures or television programs without the consent of copyright holders is illegal. There are however, several legal ways to download movies from the Internet.