16/11/2006

The US film industry lost $440m in 2005 in Italy alone as a result of piracy, according to Robert Pisano, president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), an organization of film producers and distributors.

“This is a price we can no longer afford to pay and which the Prodi administration must consider a serious form of tax evasion”, said Pisano in the Giornale dello Spettacolo trade paper. "Piracy is our main concern in the development and survival of the entertainment industry ".

To defeat piracy, Pisano maintains that everyone must take responsibility and do their part, but “my perception is that there is an open issue that must be at the head of the fight against piracy.” Professionals should instead “help young people understand the gravity of buying or downloading pirated audiovisual material and support the police to the best of their possibilities in fighting very powerful criminal organisations. It is also important that rights holders not remain rooted to their old positions but, rather, think of legal forms of alternative distribution”. People actually still think of piracy as a ‘small thing’’’, continued the MPAA president. “Even in America many people have the strange idea that an act of piracy committed on the individual level isn’t wrong when the damage is actually great to those within the industry as well as to the state”.

On the legislation being discussed in Brussels, Pisano thinks that “the best way for the European Union to cope with piracy is to allow, through legal means, for the market to defend itself by itself”.

(Translated from Italian)