'PIRACY: Opportunity on the High Seas'

Anthony Healey (APRA) Tim Riley (lawyer), Victoria Spackman (formerly with SPP as lawyer) and Brian Seth Hurst (the father of cross-platform) on how to get to your audience before the pirates do.

Ant: The issues surrounding copyright and new technology are re-shaping the media world. APRA has 35,000 members in Australia and NZ.  Meanwhile a generation of young people are no longer buying CD’s and do not comprehend the concept of paying for music.

Tim: The definition of piracy is copyright infringement. As the owner of copyright in an artistic work, you have certain rights to perform and to copy. The big corporations have used the courts particularly in America to fight landmark battles against what they regard as copyright infringements, eg the music industry V Napster case.

Victoria : At South Pacific Pictures the experience of pirating affected returns of Sione’s Wedding at the box-office especially in South Auckland . For us it was a quality issue, it affects your market as people are seeing an inferior version of the product. It cost SPP a huge legal bill of around $100,000 to fight the case, but the stakes are high in terms of actual losses at the box office as a result, estimated cost $500,000 at the box office.

We tried offering a reward for people to dob in pirated copies and those distributing but the police said we couldn’t pay the reward until they had a conviction as it could jeopardize their case.

To prevent piracy you need to control screening tapes, and look at water-marking them so you can track copies.

Brian: In the USA , everything is checked so you cannot use a camera phone in a theatre. People sign affidavits saying they will not let a preview DVD copy of a movie from their sight.

American TV shows are being pirated in the UK , and Australia through bit-torrent. In New Zealand broadband is not so fast, which is hindering piracy. With the internet there is a balance between innovation versus protecting exposure when you’re not famous and then shutting it down when you become famous.

You-Tube has created a completely new raft of piracy issues. What often happens is that if you send an authorized letter content will be removed fairly quickly if it shouldn’t be there.  My advice is learn as much as you can about sites like You-Tube and MySpace as your best defence against the pirates is an offence. You have to know what is going on and you cannot just stick your head in the sand.

Tim: Consumers out there are prepared to give you their money – but they want to have control over when they want to see it, the industry is reacting to that but the industry is slow.

Audience: Tony Eaton from NZ Fact (NZ Federation against Copyright Theft) says gangs are now getting behind movie piracy offering DVD’s with cannabis sales.

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