The American movie industry and its fight against piracy
TABLE OF CONTENT
INTRODUCTION 3
1. BACKGROUND INFORMATION 4
1.1 The American movie industry and movie piracy 4
1.2 Internet piracy 4
1.3 Prevalence of internet piracy 5
2. INTERNATIONAL EFFORTS TO PROTECT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY 6
2.1 WTO’s Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) 6
2.2 The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) 7
3. INTEREST GROUPS 9
3.1 The motion picture association of America (MPAA) 9
3.1.1 The association 9
3.1.2 Strategy against piracy 9
3.1.3 Political actions against piracy in the US 10
3.2 Civil rights 12
4. ISSUE ANALYSIS AND PROPOSED SOLUTIONS 14
CONCLUSIONS 16
REFERENCES 17
INTRODUCTION
This paper deals with the issue of movie piracy, with particular reference to the American movie industry.
First, we will provide some background information on the American movie industry and the concept of movie piracy. Movie piracy can take many forms, but in this paper we will mainly focus on internet piracy. Therefore, we briefly explain what internet piracy is and why it is such a prevalent problem.
In the second part, we expound two important agreements that have been brought about in an attempt to protect intellectual property. We disclose the WTO’s agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights and the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement (ACTA). Afterwards, we discuss some of the numerous interest groups that are involved in movie piracy. We start with the Motion Picture Association of America, and its strategy and lobbying action against piracy.
Next, we describe the position of some non-governmental organizations and civil society groups that express their concern about some agreements with regard to civil rights. The secrecy of such negotiations and the possible threat to fundamental privacy particularly worries them.
We conclude this paper by proposing some...