Piracy battle starts in Venice
The battle against digital piracy starts in Italy in October, with the setting up of a technical roundtable (unveiled at Cannes), organised by the under-secretary of Council President Gianni Letta. The purpose is to promote collaboration between representatives of the film, music, audiovisual and Telecom industries in order to combat illegal downloads.
This plan was confirmed by the director general for Film, Gaetano Blandini, during the conference on piracy promoted at the Venice Festival by Cinecittà Holding and the Directorate-General for Film of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities.
Research by the MPPA and L.E.K. has estimated the loss of turnover suffered by the international audiovisual industry in 2005 at $18.2bn, including over $7bn as a result of online piracy.
In Italy, there are differing ideas about how to solve the problem: the Italian Society of Authors and Editors are calling for sanctions to be introduced against the end-users, i.e. the youngsters who download films from the web, accompanied by an educational campaign in schools.
Meanwhile, Riccardo Tozzi – president of the National Union of Producers – suggests turning the pirates into the future customers of a legal download system which would provide film content at a low price. Director Daniele Luchetti – representative of the CentoAutori movement – would instead like to see the providers pay.
(Translated from Italian)
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