mpa MPA: We’ve Reached a Turning Point on Piracy

[Reefa]

The president of the MPAA's European operation says he believes a turning point has been reached on piracy, with service providers and search engines beginning to understand they all have a role to play. However, it's also clear that Hollywood is fearful of opening up content across Europe, which in itself could contribute to piracy.

 

 

After many years of litigation aimed at forcing the world’s largest pirate sites to their knees, the situation on the ground hasn’t changed very much for Hollywood.

 

Despite having many important legal wins under their belts, almost every single movie is available for immediate download within a few mouse clicks. In fact in some respects the position today is much worse than it was five or even ten years ago.

 

But while the sites themselves continue largely as before, progress is being made with other players in the Internet ecosystem, a fact recognized by MPA Europe president Stan McCoy as he addressed colleagues in France last week.

 

“Protecting creativity takes commitment from a whole ecosystem of people and organizations, from theater owners and operators, to technology companies and online service providers, to retailers both large and small, to Internet intermediaries, to law enforcement authorities,” he said.

 

While relationships with Hollywood are somewhat fragile, Google has indeed made many gestures towards the entertainment industries by helping to make copyright-infringing content harder to find. Payment processors are also doing their part, with Visa, MasterCard and PayPal all trying to stop pirate operations from using their services.

 

Nevertheless, the overarching message is that Google can always do more and indeed isn’t doing enough. One only has to look at the war of words taking place over the recent Copyright Office DMCA submission process to see that the battle is far from over and more blood is yet to be spilled.

 

But McCoy appears optimistic and notes that those engaged indirectly in the piracy ecosystem are beginning to come round to Hollywood’s way of thinking that they must together share responsibility to solve the problem.

 

“I put it to the audience that we may have come to a turning point in our fight against piracy, a point where intermediaries begin to understand that the creative industry does not seek to shy away from its duties and responsibilities – and it really has not – but that instead all players in the ecosystem, which of course includes not only access providers, but also search engines and payment processors amongst others – have a role to play,” said.

 

If that is the case then Hollywood has probably come a long way. It certainly isn’t going to solve this problem on its own and having powerful allies on board will certainly help its cause. The emphasis these days is indeed on voluntary cooperation such as warning notices schemes but it’s unclear how much further ISPs are prepared to go and whether the notices even have much effect.

 

But of course one shouldn’t forget the consumers so it’s no surprise that McCoy had something to say about the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) study published last week which found that 38% of young people see nothing morally wrong in piracy.

 

“What is more staggering is that nearly one in four believed that they were doing nothing wrong in accessing digital content from illegal sources for personal use,” McCoy said.

 

“Clearly it is important that young people understand that making a film, writing a book or recording a song, the amount of time, effort and investment is more than a passion – it is also someone’s livelihood. Let’s remember that 7 million people work in the creative industry in Europe.”

 

But what that very same survey also found is that the number one reason (58%) for young people to stop using illegal sources would be the availability of affordable content from legal sources. The MPAA is campaigning heavily at the moment claiming it is doing just that, but there are also clear signs that the EU’s plans to outlaw geo-blocking and open up content EU-wide aren’t sitting well with the studios.

 

In a posting to his LinkedIn page, McCoy likens Europeans’ distrust of genetically modified food to the EU’s plan to tweak copyright law.

 

“Many Europeans are skeptical of genetic modification when it comes to foods. Should they also be skeptical of genetic modification of … copyright laws?” he asks.

 

“With its efforts to institute the Digital Single Market and the recent Proposal for a Regulation on Portability, the European Commission seems intent on tinkering with the DNA of the current copyright law. This could have uncertain results for the 7 million people in Europe’s core creative industries, whose livelihoods depend on the copyright system.”

 

Pointing to a study financed by the EU Commission itself, McCoy suggests there is no need to outlaw geo-blocking, since all but 10% of people are available to find everything they want online.

 

“The European Commission should rigorously apply its own better regulation guidelines to all copyright proposals, including ensuring that they are backed by strong evidence,” he adds.

 

“In cases where the evidence isn’t there, then maybe we should stay away from genetically modified rights … and stick with organic.”

 

Needless to say, not everyone agrees with his stance.

 

SourcE

[funkyy]

So much time, effort and money spent on a fabricated loss figure...meanwhile the Panama Fonseca papers are revealing how many of our political masters, and our societies' rich elite have been growing their already big fortunes by immorally and illegally avoiding paying taxes by hoarding their money in fake off-shore companies that act as no more than a black bag for their loot. The powers that be in all our countries knew absolutely that this has been going on for generations...but how much publicity did they give it? How much effort was made to identify those involved? How many were caught, investigated and prosecuted? Answer:- ZERO. While all us mugs were earning our honest salary and paying a large proportion of it in tax, these blood suckers were laughing at our naivety.

I say again that I have always believed that there are only two kinds of people in the world..those who have too much money and those who don't have enough..religion and nationalism are the tricks used to occupy us and distract us from what our self proclaimed "masters" are doing...i.e. filling their pockets with the wealth of the world and keeping us down. The Fonseca papers scandal is a perfect example of why they fear the internet and our freedom to use it. These papers would never have been leaked to us, especially in such a large quantity, in a non-internet world. They are absolutely terrified of the internet and their crusade against "piracy" is a smokescreen that they are using to try and pass laws that will enable them to strictly control our freedom and our access to ANYTHING they don't want us to see.

[CODYQX4]

May every last one of them be force-fed every last dollar of their ill-gotten gains.

 

Parasites have the nerve to call pirates thieves when they're holding back decades of progress to line their own pockets. They'd all be put under the jail if I had that power.

[virge]

RIAA claimed there were losing billions cause no one was buying music on a plastic disc and refused to believe online streaming was how people wanted there music. FACT: CD sales grossed 56 million in 2015, only down 4% from 2014, so yea, RIAA is all wrong.

 

MPAA claimed there were losing billions cause people were downloading movies.  FACT: Star Wars Force Awakens grossed one billion in 12-days, so yea, the MPAA is all wrong.

[steven36]

4 hours ago, virge said:

RIAA claimed there were losing billions cause no one was buying music on a plastic disc and refused to believe online streaming was how people wanted there music. FACT: CD sales grossed 56 million in 2015, only down 4% from 2014, so yea, RIAA is all wrong.

Before everybody got the  internet  everybody bought music . I use to buy it a lot  .It was cool to have a big music collection

 

Back in  1999 they sold $14.6 billion in the USA alone . in 2014 they made US$14.97 billion world wide, The fact every one has world wide access did not help any at all .

 

http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/02/news/companies/napster_music_industry/

http://www.ifpi.org/news/Global-digital-music-revenues-match-physical-format-sales-for-first-time

 

 

Quote

The past decade has brought along many changes, both technological and societal, which have forever changed the face of the global music industry. Today, music superstars, such as Taylor Swift, who’s album "1989" was the best-selling physical album in the United States in the first half of 2015, have money, coverage in all possible mediums and power like never before. However, as of 2014, the worldwide revenue generated by the music business was almost 15 billion U.S. dollars, some ten billion less than in 2002.

http://www.statista.com/statistics/273308/music-album-sales-in-the-us/

 

What they make now they made off the USA alone in years past.

 

The thing with Google removing  results  and the MPA  thinks its helping let them  think its' helping . Most all of us hides behind vpns and use leechers they don’t know were  downloaders are from any more. 

[flash48]

If you release copyright content in digital form, guess what happens?  You cannot have your cake and eat it too.  Hollywood needs to change their business model.

[funkyy]

@steven36,....it's called "changing times". People have so many more alternative ways to get their music, even by paying, so obviously sales figures from the infancy days of digital media were higher. The iPod alone was being used by millions upon millions of people to store their music, people who at one time had to buy CD's. So it would be incorrect to say that the decrease in CD sales was caused by piracy. Independent surveys show that comparing the two groups those who download music and those who don't, the former buy more music legally than the latter. Like I said at the beginning, times change...if you don't change with the times you fall by the wayside.

[steven36]

8 hours ago, flash48 said:

If you release copyright content in digital form, guess what happens?  You cannot have your cake and eat it too.  Hollywood needs to change their business model.

They  had no choice  but to sell digital downloads and give it away free once us pirates got done with them . We done made our own free mp3s and Flac digital downloads years before they started that.

RIAA against illegal downloading is what started legal digital downloads

Quote

 

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) oversees about 85% of published music production, distribution and manufacturing in the United States. They work to protect musicians while supporting the First Amendment rights. Their stated goal is to support artists' creativity and help them not be cheated out of money by illegal downloading. The Recording Industry Association of America launched its first lawsuits on 8 September 2003, against individuals who illegally downloaded music files from the Kazaa FastTrack network.

Two years after it began, the campaign survived at least one major legal challenge. The RIAA said it filed 750 suits in February 2006against individuals downloading music files without paying for them in hopes of putting an end to Internet music piracy. The RIAA hopes their campaign will force people to respect the copyrights of music labels and eventually minimize the number of illegal downloads.

 

The Official Charts Company began to incorporate digital downloads for the first time in the UK Singles Chart on 17 April 2005, at which time Radio 1 stopped broadcasting the separate download chart,although the chart is still compiled. Initially this was on condition that the song must have a physical media release at the same time; this rule was fully lifted on 1 January 2007, meaning all download sales are now eligible in the chart

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_download

 

1 hour ago, funkyy said:

So it would be incorrect to say that the decrease in CD sales was caused by piracy.

  One reason for the lack of sells  is there's not  very much good music any more , most everything has done been done all ready, but  yes a big part of it was caused by piracy.  Napster , Kazza , Limewire  was the 1st Itunes  and it was all pirated  and free, we drove them to making digital music  because there were such a high demand for it ,everyone back in the day pirated music  no one got sued for downloading  tell 2003  . Its all we had to do on 56k dailup  you sure couldn’t  download a movie or anything back then on no dial up  . 

Some the old school groups like AC/DC  and Pink Floyd  still want allow there music to be sold on no Itunes tell this day .

 

With Internet radio  and youtube  and other free streaming  I have no use to pirate music any more too much legal ways to listen too it.

 

 

They way i done movies back when I was on dailup  this was before anydvd  came out , we had free decrypt software. I bought 1 click DVD Copy  and a DVD Bunner many pcs didn’t come with them then and put it in my PC  with my DVD player , I would rent DVD's  and burn them  on blank DVDs  . I never downloaded a movie tell we got DSL.
 

[funkyy]

I wonder how many rich rock stars appear in the Fonseca files with their money in off-shore "companies" to avoid paying tax????? Tax evasion loses each country more money than we can count...yet you hardly hear a peep about it. The Prime Minister of Iceland was forced to resign a week ago because of his involvement. The Prime Minister of Great Britain, David Cameron, is under pressure because of his family's hidden wealth, and the list is growing each day. The same people who lay down the law for the rest of us flagrantly ignore said laws to greedily increase their own wealth. The eyes of the people are opening!!!

[CODYQX4]

1 hour ago, funkyy said:

I wonder how many rich rock stars appear in the Fonseca files with their money in off-shore "companies" to avoid paying tax????? Tax evasion loses each country more money than we can count...yet you hardly hear a peep about it. The Prime Minister of Iceland was forced to resign a week ago because of his involvement. The Prime Minister of Great Britain, David Cameron, is under pressure because of his family's hidden wealth, and the list is growing each day. The same people who lay down the law for the rest of us flagrantly ignore said laws to greedily increase their own wealth. The eyes of the people are opening!!!

Nobody of enough power will be ousted. The Iceland PM is but a lowly peon in the grand scheme of things. You won't see anyone in the big 5 quit unless it's a smoke and mirrors con game, and really they're just going to manage a hedge fund while pillaging your 401K instead due to revolving door policies.