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images/news/mafiaa.jpgFollowing the banks and the car companies, the movie industry might be the next to be hit by the economic downturn. No bail-out plan has been suggested as of yet, but MPAA chairman Dan Glickman is worried that piracy will grow to a new high during the current financial crisis - and he might just have a point there.
If everything the MPAA said was true actually turned out to be true, the movie industry would have been bankrupt years ago. In 2005 the organization funded a study which claimed that in the US alone, over $6 billion was lost to MPAA members due to piracy. However, the figures and data behind those claims have never been publicly released, and it later became apparent that they were not completely accurate.
In fact, earlier this year the MPAA had to release a statement saying ‘they made a mistake’ in the figures. Nevertheless, the $6 billion figure in question has been quoted a lot, with MPAA chairman Dan Glickman still using it in almost every public talk, to convince his listeners of the seriousness of the ‘piracy’ issue. According to the MPAA there is more bad weather ahead, as it is now worried that piracy might flourish in the current financial climate.
“If you look at the situation, the current economic crisis makes this problem much more serious than before,” Glickman said recently at a forum, adding, “If we don’t protect IPR (intellectual property rights), our economic losses will be far worse.” The MPAA will of course leave no excuse unused to justify its anti-piracy measures, nothing new there. Although there are no studies that show how illegal downloads actually affect sales at the box office, there has been a significant bump in the number of BitTorrent users recently.
Read on...
If everything the MPAA said was true actually turned out to be true, the movie industry would have been bankrupt years ago. In 2005 the organization funded a study which claimed that in the US alone, over $6 billion was lost to MPAA members due to piracy. However, the figures and data behind those claims have never been publicly released, and it later became apparent that they were not completely accurate.
In fact, earlier this year the MPAA had to release a statement saying ‘they made a mistake’ in the figures. Nevertheless, the $6 billion figure in question has been quoted a lot, with MPAA chairman Dan Glickman still using it in almost every public talk, to convince his listeners of the seriousness of the ‘piracy’ issue. According to the MPAA there is more bad weather ahead, as it is now worried that piracy might flourish in the current financial climate.
“If you look at the situation, the current economic crisis makes this problem much more serious than before,” Glickman said recently at a forum, adding, “If we don’t protect IPR (intellectual property rights), our economic losses will be far worse.” The MPAA will of course leave no excuse unused to justify its anti-piracy measures, nothing new there. Although there are no studies that show how illegal downloads actually affect sales at the box office, there has been a significant bump in the number of BitTorrent users recently.
Read on...
