There are those among us, even here at HDTV Magazine, who feel an injustice coming from the "draconian" copy protection measures being imposed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). We tend to think of the reason for those measures as not real and certainly disassociated from ourselves.

The following MPAA press release from Asia dated February 7, 2006 illustrates the piracy problem in that region of the world. The problem is not shrinking. With cheaper home-use equipment pirates plunder. Not until the problem withers away through our collective self/social-discipline will copy protection measures be slackened. I know we will not argue over the value to a modern economic system of copyright laws. We may bicker over the length of a copyright grant and the language governing "fair use," but no thinking person would seek the end of copyright laws. _Dale Cripps

MPAA ANTI-PIRACY ENFORCEMENT OPERATIONS SHOW SHIFT IN TACTICS BY MOVIE PIRATES

Downloads, Difficult-to-Detect Burner Labs Supplant Factory Production

Hong Kong, Encino - Anti-piracy operations conducted throughout the Asia- Pacific region by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) in 2005 confirmed that movie pirates are significantly changing their tactics in an attempt to evade an increased focus on intellectual property crime by Asian law enforcement agencies and courts.

While factory-replicated optical discs continue to account for the majority of optical discs produced by movie pirates in the Asia-Pacific region, MPA operational results made clear that a shift is underway in many countries from large-scale production in optical disc factories using machines that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, to burner labs that can contain dozens of low-cost burners and are often located in apartments and small retail premises. Both types of operation are capable of producing tens of millions of pirate DVDRs or CD-Rs per year, but burner labs are inexpensive and easy to set up, and if raided, easily and quickly replaceable. As broadband penetration rates grew throughout the region in 2005, illegal file sharing continued to increase as a threat, but Asia-Pacific courts issued a number of landmark judgments against peer-to-peer (P2P) copyright pirates, including in Australia against the operators of the Kazaa P2P network and in Hong Kong a world-first prosecution of a user of BitTorrent technology. "Last year, illegal piracy continued as the biggest challenge facing not only the American film industry, but every domestic film producer in the Asia-Pacific region," said Mike Ellis, Senior Vice President and Regional Director, Asia-Pacific for the Motion Picture Association. "The far-reaching economic and social costs of piracy are clear to government officials and businesspeople around the region, who realize that the problem is a big one and needs to be resolved.

When consumers also realize that buying pirated product hurts their fellow citizens, by costing them wages and jobs, their countries' economies, and their countries themselves, we will be well on the road to resolving the problem." In 2005, the MPA's operations in the Asia-Pacific region investigated more than 34,000 cases of piracy and assisted law enforcement officials in conducting more than 10,500 raids. These activities resulted in the seizure of more than 34 million illegal optical discs, 55 factory optical disc production lines and 3,362 optical disc burners, as well as the initiation of more than 8,000 legal actions. Notably, seizures of DVD-Rs produced by burner labs were up 115 percent over 2004, and seizures of DVD-R burners were up 220 percent. In Hong Kong, 1,150 optical disc burners were seized, and in Taiwan, 875 optical disc burners were seized. In mainland China, where factory-replicated pirate optical discs continue to dominate, more than 16.7 million VCDs and DVDs were seized in operations in which the MPA was involved, but these seizures very likely represent a small fraction of the total number of pirate and pornographic optical discs seized by all law enforcement agencies in China in 2005. China seized more than 224 million pirate and pornographic optical discs in 2004.

WHAT IS OPTICAL DISC PIRACY?

Optical disc piracy is the illegal manufacturing, sale, distribution or trading of copies of motion pictures in digital disc formats including DVD, DVD-R, CD, CD-R and VCD. These illegal hard goods are sold on websites, online auction sites, via e-mail solicitation and by street vendors and flea markets around the world. Much like downloadable media, the pirated motion pictures in hard goods format are typically poor-quality video-camera recordings.

While the majority of pirated optical disc products seized by law enforcement worldwide are made on advanced commercial replication lines, the low cost of disc burning hardware and blank discs has led to the proliferation of DVD-R and CD-R burner labs.

Posted by Dale Cripps, February 10, 2006 11:18 PM