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Hollywood, Tollywood in anti-piracy pact

Mike Robinson, Global Enforcement Officer, Motion Pictures Association (MPA) and Edward Neubronner, Regional Operations Director, MPA, signed the MoU to work jointly with the A P Film Chamber of Commerce and Anti-Video Piracy Cell on Intellectual Property Rights issue, officials at the Chief Minister’s Office said, adding that officials from the US Consulate office were also present. This is the first time that the MPA, a consortium of all the major Hollywood studios like Warner Brothers, 20^th Century Fox, Walt Disney, Sony, Paramount and Universal, has signed such an MoU in India.

The CMO official said Andhra Pradesh was the first State in the country to have an exclusive court for trial of video piracy cases. It is also the first State to introduce compulsory licensing system for video stores to regulate sale of home video products, besides being the first state to create a separate video piracy review committee at the district level.

As per the estimates, the Telugu Film Industry lost about Rs3.38 billion in 2010 on account of Internet Piracy alone. An alarming issue is the growth rate of internet piracy which is about 65 per cent 
per annum. The losses due to physical piracy are much larger than these as Internet penetration in Andhra Pradesh is only 9.5 
per cent.

The proposals under the MoU include greater all round awareness on Intellectual Property Rights, better enforcement of anti-piracy provisions, examining the United Kingdom model in tackling uploaders and downloaders at regular intervals, bringing in camcording and online piracy legislations to suit the digital era and putting standard operation procedures in place to ensure better conviction rate.