04/12/2013 - The proposal was made during the Professional Cinema Days in Sorrento, where workers from the sector are currently gathered

A day where cinemas would all be closed: this is the latest idea to denounce the problem of piracy. The hypothesis was formulated during the course of the Cinema Professional Days in Sorrento, where workers from the film industry are currently gathered.

Yesterday, the conference named “audiovisual piracy in the digital era”, promoted by ANEC in collaboration with ANICA and FAPAV, AgCom’s Francesco Posteraro took centre-stage, confirming the approval of pre-Christmas regulations, as well as expressing his satisfaction with European Commission provisions. Posteraro indicated the entering into force of the new regulation during the first few months of 2014 and stressed that the AgCom instrument further enforced pre-existing law. “There is no risk for censoring or dictatorship with this new regulation. The only danger derives from not protecting intellectual property,” Posteraro said.

The cinema head at MiBACT, Nicola Borrelli, was in support of this move, together with other representatives from the sector Lionello Cerri, ANEC president Andrea Occhipinti, Lucky Red president and section distributor at ANICA, Carlo Bernaschi, ANEM president, Luciana Della Fornace, AGISCUOLA president, who repeated the absolute necessity to come up with urgent measures against piracy. In particular, Cerri, taking hold of a new proposal by the Lazio ANEC branch, put forward a proposal to reach an agreement with other associations in order to organise the closing of cinemas for a day on a national level. This would send a strong message to institutions, he argued, and would also raise awareness with younger audience members regarding the problem of legality.

Federico Bagnoli Rossi, head of FAPAV (Italian federation for the tutelage of audiovisual and multimedia content) provided an up-to-date scenario: audiovisual piracy causes €500 million in damages, of which €106 million are directly taken away from cinema venues.

(Translated from Italian)