Cinexpo 2005
Scene stealers
June 21, 2005
For Katz, vp Europe, Middle East and Africa at the Motion Picture Assn.'s Brussels office, the politician's relationship with the copyright thief summed up the entrenched links between piracy and organized crime in Europe. "Piracy in Russia is as bad as it can get," Katz says. "The piracy rate is 90%; the number of DVD lines at optical disk plants is increasing, flooding the local market and spreading into Europe, the United Kingdom and the Middle East. The manufacturers and distributors are very much in the grip of organized crime." Russian movie piracy is among the worst in Europe, where gangsters increasingly are using intellectual-property theft as a front for other unlawful activities, including human, drugs and arms smuggling, plus money laundering. It's guaranteed to be the subject of the moment at this year's Cinema Expo International -- running Monday-June 30 at the Amsterdam RAI International Exhibition and Congress Center -- where one seminar is called "A Wake-up Call: European Perspectives on Movie Theft." But growing piracy problems are hardly confined to Russia. "In several other (European) countries, criminal gang masters are involved in large-scale piracy," says Ted Shapiro, deputy managing director at the MPA's Brussels office and vp general counsel Europe. "We've had raids where drugs, guns, knives are found. These are not nice people; they know very well that the penalty for piracy is far less than it is for smuggling an ounce of cocaine or heroin." In the U.K. alone, where terrorists and Chinese gangs are among the worst perpetrators, the national film industry loses about £400 million ($732 million) a year to pirates. If the numbers reveal anything, it's that the country's anti-piracy battle has a long way to go. Last year, the U.K.'s Federation Against Copyright Theft and the British government's HM Revenue & Customs seized more than 3 million unauthorized DVDs, compared with 314,000 illegal videos confiscated in 2001. The MPA estimates more than 35 million are actually sold, making the U.K. the second-worst-affected territory after the U.S. U.K. custom officers at airports are constantly impounding oil paintings, stuffed animals and even computer accessories that are used to disguise smuggled illegal DVDs. China, Malaysia and Pakistan are the U.K.'s biggest source of pirated DVDs, and, according to FACT, the proceeds are being used to fund organized crime and human trafficking. In addition, Britain's piracy situation is exacerbated by the discovery that more than 25% of illegal DVDs purchased in the country are bought at the workplace, says Paris-based research company IPSOS. The country's online piracy via peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing and DVD-burning also is expected to grow as broadband Internet penetration is forecast to exceed 12 million homes by 2008. Last year, a British Video Assn. study estimated that 1.7 million illegitimate movies and TV programs were downloaded, nearly three times the quantity calculated the previous year. FACT's seizure of DVD-R (recordable blank DVD) for reproducing illegal copies soared 200% in the first quarter of this year. Elsewhere on the continent, piracy and technology have converged in Germany to form especially sophisticated distribution channels called "release groups," whereby pirates dub local or Hollywood movies into German to sell as pirate DVDs before the films open in theaters. Before the movies are officially distributed, the release groups unleash copies on P2P networks for illegal downloads. France, Italy and the Netherlands also have a growing number of release groups. In one of the most effective anti-piracy investigations to date, in April, FACT's German counterpart, GVU, smashed the operations of a release group known as "Flatline" -- described as "the largest local source of German-dubbed pirate movies on the Internet." In Southern Italy, family owned cottage industries are set up to download and burn unlicensed DVDs. Currently, camcorder piracy is not a statutory crime in European nation states as it is in the U.S. But anti-piracy organizations fear Europe's lax laws might tempt serial camcorder pirates to cross the Atlantic. "We're beginning to press governments in Europe to make it criminal to operate a recording device in cinemas," says Dara MacGreevy, MPA vp and anti-piracy director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Elsewhere, regulators and movie industry representatives are hitting back where it hurts at regional and national levels. Several new initiatives have been launched to bolster Europe's anti-piracy resources:  FACT has received financial support to open a new unit designed to provide enforcement authorities with the necessary evidence for clamping down against movie counterfeiters. The unit, which goes into effect in September, will use analytical software called I2 on FACT's database to gain extra know-how and identify trends that will make anti-piracy probes more effective.In March 2004, an anti-piracy initiative called the Industry Trust for IP Awareness was launched in Britain to help employers nationwide block copyright theft in the workplace.Brussels-based International Video Federation, which represents national video associations in 15 European markets, aims to back local campaigns similar to those by the Industry Trust for IP Awareness.France's video sector is adopting the government-sanctioned anti-piracy charter launched by the music industry in July 2004. The charter invites local ISPs to help discourage illegal downloads among subscribers.At the Dutch Film Festival in Utrecht on Sept. 28, the Netherlands' movie industry, video distributors, video retail chains and cinema exhibitors will join forces to spread their anti-piracy message to the public in a €500,000 ($614,000) campaign featuring its new Web site, www.filmwereld.net. In addition to featuring anti-piracy TV and cinema ads, the site will explain why movie piracy is a crime punishable with a maximum of four years in prison and a €45,000 ($55,000) fine and will be used to launch a future survey to see if its message is effectively reaching consumers. At the regional level, the European Commission has embarked on a survey designed to learn about copyright enforcement and infringement among the European Union's trading partners, including Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America. The move aims to help make the EU's Copyright Directive and Enforcement Directive more effective. Currently, the Copyright Directive's provisions have been incorporated into national law in all but three of the EU's 25 states. France, Finland and Spain claim more pressing local issues have delayed their implementation of the agreement. The deadline for local adoption of the Enforcement Directive, which permits civil prosecution for copyright theft, is 2006. But the industry is confident the legislations will be adopted throughout Europe, facilitating their battles against IP infringement. "Most of the former Eastern European markets had already adopted the provisions to join the EU, and we've seen improvements in those countries," MacGreevy says. "Several of them have really improved their enforcement regimes." |
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