IPR education critical in piracy fight: Pisano

MUMBAI: Motion Picture Association president and chief operating officer Bob Pisano used a keynote speech at the inaugural Tokyo International Film Festival Intellectual Property Rights Forum to urge film industry representatives to work together and with other copyright industry associations to educate consumers in the value of intellectual property rights (IPR).

“Tokyo is the ideal venue for a discussion of how young people view intellectual property rights, and how those views affect the future of the motion picture and other creative industries. The creativity that is on display in so many places in Tokyo, and more widely throughout Japan, is critical to Japan’s cultural identity, critical to the country’s domestic economy, and critical to Japan’s contribution to the global economy,” said Pisano.

“We need to take our case both to young people and to older citizens, individuals who should appreciate even more profoundly the relationship between the unlawful reproduction of legal products and the loss of honest jobs, income and tax revenues that are critical to building a better society,” he added.

Lauding the enactment in August of legislation that bars the use of a recording device in a cinema, Pisano noted that the Motion Picture Association, in partnership with a coalition of Japanese film industry associations, supports proposed legislation that would amend the Japan’s Copyright Law to criminalize unauthorized downloading via Internet of copyrighted content.

Pisano concluded his remarks by saying, “While we are doing a great deal to address the problem of piracy, we need to do more and we need to do it urgently. We in the movie industry must work with our counterparts in the music business, the game software business, the computer software business, with governments and with educational institutions. Our collective goal must be to devise and execute strategies for attacking intellectual property theft from all points on the compass.”