Educate masses on IPR to check cinema piracy:MPA

Panaji, Nov 24 (UNI) Educating the masses on the need to protect Intellectual Property Rights and intensifying raids to check film piracy which had claimed a loss of US 6 billion dollars last year world wide, is the need of the hour, the Motion Pictures Association (MPA) said.

''All over the world people bought compact disks of motion pictures worth 18 billion dollar even as the industry lost US 6.1 billion dollar due to internet piracy. Four out of 10 pictures released in the US have been making losses and the losses are mounting year after year,'' senior vice president and Asia-Pacific regional director of the MPA Mike Ellis said.

Efforts by the MPA over the last ten years had resulted in halving piracy in Hong Kong and Singapore and 80 per cent in India.

India alone accounts for Rs 1,700 crore to the entertainment industry due to piracy, says anti-piracy activist in India Chander M Lall and Japan-based communications consultant of the MPA Mr Roberto De Vido.

Interacting with media persons on the sidelines of the ongoing International Film Festival of India (IFFI) and the just concluded conference of the Confederation of Indian Industry on "India-Big Picture" here today, the trio said the motion picture industry all over the world lost about US 2.4 billion dollar to bootlegging, US 1.4 billion dollar to illegal copying and US 2.3 billion dollar to internet piracy.

Of the US 6.1 billion dollar loss of revenue to the studios, about US 1.2 billion dollar came from piracy across Asia-Pacific region while the US accounted for US 1.3 billion dollars.

The MPA had investigated 34,000 cases of piracy and assisted law enforcement officials in conducting more than 10,500 raids resulting in seizure of more than 34 million illegal optical discs and 3362 optical disc burners and closing 55 factories manufacturing them besides initiating prosecution against 8000 people.

In India, it was estimated that only 20 per cent of the pirated goods infringe the copyrights of foreign film titles while the remaining 80 per cent of pirated product infringes the copyrights of domestic firms.

The MPA in India had conducted 1000 raids in cooperation with the law enforcement authorities besides civil raids through court appointed local commissioners in civil suits.

The MPA has now decided to undertake ''educational outreach programmes" beginning with institutions of higher learning such as universities and IIMs besides trying to introduce the IPR as a subject.

It had also prepared a 30-minute documentary ''What's It to Me?: Creativity, Copyright and the People Who Care About Them,'' aimed at presenting different view points of the students and professors about the IPR regime, with piracy of films in particulars.

They had interviewed university students in Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore for eliciting their views besides Rakeysh Mehra, producer/director of the hit film Rang de Basanti and Delhi University's law professor Dr Raman Mittal.

The three also admitted the need for lowering the cost of the original CDs and piracy within the movie industry so that people rejected the pirated discs for entertainment.

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