Petteri Pyyny
13 Dec 2004 11:55
UK Film Council, an association that represents British film industry and is backed by the British government, is urging the government to change the legislation in order to tackle an increasing movie piracy in the United Kingdom.
Organization's main targets are counterfeit DVDs that represent a direct threat to legal DVD sales and specifically wants to have new powers to crack down the so-called "car boot sale culture" for counterfeit DVD movies. According to the organization, UK has now the highest level of movie piracy in the western Europe, annual losses adding up to £500M (€723M, $963M).
Organization's proposals include banning camcorders from movie theatres, handing out rewards for people who help to crack down pirates and putting pressure on countries that have "too relaxed" copyright legislation (most notably selected Asian countries). Interestingly though, one of the organization's suggestions was to provide a legal ways to buy movies over the Net -- a market that is still lacking its own "iTunes for movies" service that would make purchasing movies online easy and with as little restrictions as possible.
Source: BBC