Hollywood studios step up battle against pirates

St Lukes Village Sky City cinema has a strict anti-piracy policy. Picture / Chris Skelton

ORLANDO, Florida - The trade group for the major Hollywood studios began the international rollout of its anti-camcording website, fightfilmtheft.org, during the first day of the ShowEast convention of movie theater owners.

The site, initially set up to educate theater employees in North America on how to deal with illegal camcording, now has a Spanish-language version targeted to Mexico.

Motion Picture Assn. of America president Bob Pisano said 90 per cent of pirated films worldwide are the result of camcording. They contributed to an US$18.2 billion ($27.4bn) loss for the worldwide motion picture industry last year.

"As we've shut off other sources of bootleg films, including postproduction and marketing houses, the quality of camcorders has become better in resolution and sensitivity to motion," he said during the event at the Orlando World Center Marriott. "It's not great, but it's pretty damn good."

Although legislation has been introduced to criminalize camcording in Mexico, it is still legal there.

"We can't do anything about it - just kick (camcorders) out of the theater," said Miguel Angel Davila, president of both Canacine - Mexico's national film industry organization - and the Cinemex theater chain.

He added that the biggest piracy threat in Mexico came from the sale of Region 1 DVDs, which are encoded for use in North America. (Mexico and South America, along with Australia and New Zealand, use Region 4 DVDs.)

Davila explained that the Region 1 DVDs can be used to create perfect masters of films that are in current theatrical release in Mexico, where 65 per cent of households have DVD players, half of which are multiregional. In Mexico, the total consumer spending loss from piracy was estimated at US$1.1 billion last year.

"We need studios to stop selling (Region) 1 DVDs to distributors who sell them to Mexico," said Davila, whose country recently passed a law penalizing retailers who sell or rent them.

Several industry experts discussed offering incentives to theater owners and employees who catch camcorders in the act - a tactic that has been used in the United States. Sony Pictures executive Vicki Solmon said she gave a personalized jacket on top of a cash reward to one projectionist who bought his own goggles and caught a "Spider-Man 2" pirate.

Department of Homeland Security section chief David Faulconer said he would like to extend the incentives to audience members, turning them into informants. He said he had talked with one major exhibitor about incentives like family movie passes to get moviegoers to turn in bootleggers.

Faulconer said the industry had scored a major victory this year in El Salvador, which is the central point of distribution for all central American DVD bootlegs, by criminalizing its counterfeiting and tying it into a money-laundering statute. He said the US Chamber of Commerce is set to work on an anti-counterfeit initiative in Russia, where one studio estimates 85 per cent of its films' DVDs are pirated.

- REUTERS/Hollywood Reporter