The Motion Picture Association is boasting the results of recent anti-piracy efforts in Asia, claiming that the export of illegally camcorded movies dropped by roughly 40 percent.
"Operation ZoomOut," which ran from the end of last November to January 31, 2009, entailed nearly 450 raids in China, Hong Kong, Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand. Police arrested 370 suspected pirates and seized more than 4 million optical discs, the association said in a press release. As a result, the number of illegally-recorded movies sourced from the region dropped from 2.4 to 1.4 per week. The MPA — the Motion Picture Association of America’s international arm — generally conducts these kinds of raids twice a year.
A training program, called "Make a Difference 2," will follow the busts. It’s supposed to teach cinema staff and local law enforcement to recognize and apprehend people who are making bootlegs in the movie theater. There’s talk of keeping police officers on patrol, offering rewards for turning in bootleggers and using night vision to catch criminals in the act, but it’s not clear how the MPA plans to put these ideas in motion.
The MPA loves to flex its muscles over these efforts. Of the association’s last five press releases, four of them are about piracy busts, and the fifth — regarding a new MPA office in Mumbai — mentions intellectual property rights enforcement as one of the major problems to tackle in the country. It’s a sad reminder of both the amount of piracy that’s happening in Asia and how little other news the association has to report.
13 Comments
- guest
- Posts: 15288
- Posted on: 20 Feb 09 19:13
Sharing is overall a good thing, it's free publicity and people really interested actually buy the final product.
It is a bad hypothesis to consider someone would have bought the product if it wasn't available for free or cheaper. Most of time, it's the opposite, they would have shown zero interest in it to begin with.
Following the law of supply and demand this means that the pirates who were a lot smarter and didn't get caught are enjoying a better profit margin. That'll teach them.
Second: "Police arrested 370 suspected pirates and seized more than 4 million optical discs, the association said in a press release. "
WoW! Ya gotta admit- these are some hard workin' pirates to make this many discs with such a small crew! I'm so proud!!! I got a feeling they will get loose from the "authorities" in short order. Maybe they even sold some movies already to the cops in Mubai. I think they might get tempted once in a while for stuff like this. LOL!
- guest
- Posts: 15288
- Posted on: 26 Feb 09 18:34
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