Industry
The films illegal posting last week, a month before News Corp. releases it to theaters, has given studios and their allies in Washington more ammunition to press for federal aid against piracy and highlight the cost to the economy.
“There are a lot of jobs that arent going to exist because of theft, a lot of investments arent going to be made,” U.S. Representative Howard Berman, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in an interview.
Studios will ask Congress for added enforcement at a hearing Berman will lead in Los Angeles today and at another later this month in Washington. Hollywood also wants President Barack Obama to create a White House czar on intellectual property, as provided in legislation signed by his predecessor.
An unfinished copy of “X-Men Origins,” a summer tentpole movie from Twentieth Century Fox, was leaked onto the Web and downloaded possibly hundreds of thousands of times, according to Berman. Three prior “X-Men” films had worldwide ticket sales of $606 million, according to researcher Box Office Mojo LLC.
“Piracy is really a dagger in the heart,” said Dan Glickman, head of the Motion Picture Association of America and the industrys chief lobbyist.
Industry Losses
Movie and DVD counterfeiting cost entertainment companies, including studios, theaters and video stores, at least $18 billion a year, according to a 2005 survey commissioned by the industry. That includes about $11.1 billion from illegal sales of DVDs and $7.1 billion in Internet sales, said John Malcolm, head of the MPAAs anti-piracy effort.
The problem is getting worse and is hurting home-video revenue, Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Officer Robert Iger said at a Deutsche Bank conference on March 3.
Berman, a Democrat who became chairman of the foreign affairs committee last year, said the position will enable him to put pressure on foreign governments that dont abide by agreements to prevent piracy.
The recession may also help Berman convince others in Washington that theft of intellectual property is a threat to the U.S. economy. Glickman has pointed out that the film and television industries generate consistent trade surpluses.
Berman singled out China as a country that could do a better job of combating piracy. Last summer, during the Beijing Olympics, Chinese officials were aggressive in preventing counterfeit use of the official logo, Berman said. It demonstrated that they could do the same for U.S. films and television shows, he said.
A telephone message seeking comment from the information office of Chinas State Intellectual Property Office wasnt immediately returned today, a holiday in China.
Premier Wen Jiabao told Francis Gurry, director-general of the World Intellectual Property Organization, in Beijing on April 1 that China will continue to strengthen intellectual- property protection, which he called “a requirement for national development and state-to-state contact” and a way to show “respect for the value of human labor.”
Hollywood has turned to the federal government for help before. In April 2007, the U.S. Trade Representative filed two complaints against China at the World Trade Organization aimed at stopping piracy of movies, music, software and books. A decade earlier, the U.S. was poised to levy billions of dollars in sanctions against China before getting a pledge that the government would adopt new measures to curb illegal copying.
Hollywood Money
With a Democratic president and larger majority of Democrats in Congress, Hollywood is asking again.
Democrats received 90 percent of the $14 million that movie industry workers and executives gave in 2008 election contributions to federal candidates and political parties, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington- based research group. Obama received $3.4 million. The industry is the top contributor to Berman, who represents Los Angeles San Fernando Valley, furnishing $1.3 million from 1989 to 2008.
Hollywood executives including Walt Disney Studios Chairman Dick Cook will outline specific goals in their testimony. One of the industrys broader aims is to convince members of Congress that the film industry, like other U.S. businesses, needs help.