The Motion Picture Association (MPA) today launched Operation Blackout, an aggressive anti-piracy enforcement initiative scheduled to run through till 31 January, 2008 in 13 countries and territories across the Asia-Pacific region.
It is not going to be a season to be jolly for movie pirates as MPA and its partners steps up their anti-piracy activities to coincide with the blockbuster release schedule. Like Operation Tripod conducted during the summer blockbuster season, Operation Blackout will also focus on the prevention of illegal camcording of newly released titles in cinemas.
Operation Blackout operations will be conducted in Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand.
Operation Blackout will also see the launch of MPA’s multi lingual web site www.make-adifference.sg
Operation Blackout will also focus on the Internet as a channel for the distribution and sales of pirated movies while continuing to target the production, distribution and sales of pirated DVDs especially at retail hot spots throughout the region and the export of pirated optical discs around the world.
“Illegal camcording remains a high priority with our member companies. We will ramp up our anti-camcording activities during these region-wide blitzes which are a key component of our annual enforcement operations. Another primary area we are focusing on is Internet piracy and we have fine-tuned our strategies to take out websites inducing others to piracy,” said Motion Picture Association, Asia-Pacific senior vice president and regional director Mike Ellis.
“We can say this to all the pirates out there: you’d better watch out, you’d better not try,” added Ellis.
Over the past three years, six semi-annual anti-piracy sweeps conducted by the MPA have collectively resulted in more than 4,500 arrests and more than 30 million optical discs seized.
