p2pnet news view MPAA | RIAA News:- In 2007, the UK population numbered 60,776,238 [and counting], according to the CIA World Fact Book.

And no less than a third of them are file sharing pirates.

So says another Fact statement, but this time from the MPAA’s ‘Farcical Approaches to Copyright Transgressions,’ or ‘Federation Against Copyright Theft,’ depending on which side of which fence you’re sitting.

It was delivered by FACT head of communications Eddy Leviten (right) in Stopping Digital piracy: Strategy and Tactics, a recent OpSecSecurity ‘webinar’ sponsored by Fact and Warner Brothers Entertainment, Europe.

He’s, “responsible for raising and maintaining awareness of antipiracy and FACT related issues with the media,” and not only but also,  is, “responsible for creating and delivering marketing and training materials and for driving internal communications for FACT”.

Thus, his talk, covered, “how piracy affects the media overall, and some other things that FACT is doing on behalf of the media industry to make a positive impact on combating piracy”.

For example,  according to Leviten, the entertainment cartels have now moved far beyond simply accusing their own customers of being criminals and thieves, claiming sharing a movie or music online is exactly the same as stealing it from a retailer.

Time Warner, Viacom, Fox, Sony, NBC Universal and Disney [read Hollywood] and Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony BMG [read the Big 4] are, unbelievably, now even folding borrowed and viewed movies and music into their statistics.

That figure, “has gone up dramatically,” Leviten stated, declaring:

“We can safely say that people in the UK are engaging in piracy more, much more, than they were previously.”

Does that mean UK Citizens who borrow music or a movie from the local library and then enjoy it at home might soon find a corporate copyright cop banging on their doors?

Nor are home users the only ones in danger.

Fact will also be, “looking a lot more at streaming when we do the research for next year” says Leviten, because, “Certainly, the proliferation of those sites has caused us anguish.”

UK Department for Work and Pensions

Fact works within the UK, “to fight audiovisual piracy,” Leviton explains during his talk, going on:

“In terms of film and TV we operate as an enforcement body and work very closely with the statutory law enforcement agencies. But also we collaborate with agencies across the globe including partnerships with the MPAA … our parent body.”

The unit boasts it works and liases with »»»

• All UK police forces including the Metropolitan police film piracy unit
• Serious organised crime agency “because this is serious organised crime both offline and online”
• Interpol
• Europol
• UK intellectual property office
• HM Revenue & Customs; trading standards
• ELSPA (Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Associatio)
• The Big 4’s BPI (British Phonographic Industry). Of course.

—- —- —- and the UK Department for Work and Pensions.

A mistake, surely?

But No.

UK music and film industry cartel organizations the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (MCPS), the BPI and Fact have were able to co-opt Britain’s Department for Works and Pensions into copyright raids, p2pnet reported in 2005.

Code-name Zouk, “saw 57 people arrested who could face charges on benefit fraud and copyright offences — 45 of those arrested were on benefits, ” said our story.

According to Fact, tip-offs came from, “the public and honest traders who are sick of taxpayers’ money lining the pockets of cheats rather than going on services like schools and hospitals and tired of being conned with shoddy merchandise”.

Fact also has an interest in the UK border agency which it finds of, “particular interest because of the organised Chinese crime element”.

One good turn does, of course, deserve another and Fact is, “attempting to assist them [the UK border agency]” with, “their immigration issues”.

Such concerns are, after all, well within the remit of Hollywood and the Big 4.

Millions and millions of copies

“Some of you will be old hands at the piracy process and will know it’s all gone online, but they all stem from the same source — camcorder copies,” Leviton told his audience, going on

New release movies are camcorded and that copy appears both on the web and hard goods piracy. One copy can basically be distributed globally and that makes millions and millions of copies worldwide in terms of discs and in terms of online copies.

For hard goods piracy the process is pretty straightforward. It filters down to the organised crime groups that control hard goods piracy in the UK.

The biggest problem we have in the UK at the moment is organised crime who adopted TV and film piracy as their modus operandi creating considerable criminal profit which filter back into other criminal aspects in the UK but also funding other criminal activities abroad as well.

One copy is basically distributed to these organised crime groups. They will use what we call burning labs or factories and they will reproduce thousands and thousands of copies to go on the streets and in the UK, if you’ve ever been to the UK, you will know the street sellers will come to you if you’re outside a tube station a bus station ….

They will go on to retail outlets as well such as cafes and restaurants.

It is a major problem and something I think the UK law enforcement is gradually waking up to. We’ve been putting a lot of pressure on them.

But it’s more complicated online, says Leviton. And that’s because there are more stages.

“At the top of the pyramid are what we call release groups – closed groups not accessible by the general public,” he states.

“People pay to have access to these groups, or they’ve traded products themselves to have access” and it, “filters down through Top Sites and then down to where you get mass-market availability through the IRC channels and P2P networks.

“Essentially what we are showing is speed of reproduction from one camcorded copy … there can be hundreds and thousands of copies available online and on the streets within 24 hours.”

The two environments, “are feeding each other so it does not say that they are working together in collaboration all the time, but they do coexist and they do basically help proliferate film piracy across the globe, and also in the UK as well,” Leviton states, going on:

“We are looking at all these aspects looking at the release groups to try to control the original release of the product, but also looking at the bottom which is where the general public are often finding access to both streamed material and material to download.

“And in the past two years these streaming sites have been the major cause for concern for us because of mass-market availability.

Fact has “taken out a couple of these sites already in the UK and has a few more targets we aim to look at over the coming year,” he promises.

Secondary pirates

Meanwhile, the third of the British population busily pirating everything insight isn’t the only concern for Fact and MPAA operatives and associates.

Some 23% of the Britons are, “Engaged in secondary piracy, meaning people who haven’t directly created a copy but are making up copies for other people and then engaging in piracy by doing so,” Leviton asserts, again raising the spectre of streaming which, “touches on every aspect of the population”.

And the profits are online, he says, declaring »»»

At every stage there is money changing hands. It is sometimes harder to prove that the money is changing hands but we have evidence to show that there is money crossing over between all these groups both from their release groups all the way down to the links sites.

What we have been able to discover and this is something we are seeking to tackle in the coming months is the way that the sites towards the bottom of the pyramid — the http web sites and the links sites — are finding themselves.

You don’t have to pay to join these sites that they are making money and the way they are making money is by advertising.

We have one site in particular which is making up to $15,000 a month from advertising alone, which is quite a substantial income being they’re not charging for membership to the site.

Ads – we’re talking about click throughs and page views, we’re also talking about server donations while there are some sites towards the top of the pyramid asking the donations for memberships.

Again, what we’re showing here is the criminal profits as well.

There’s legislation in the UK called the Proceeds of Crime Act which enables those criminal profits to be targeted and seized, even if criminal proceedings don’t take place. It is still possible to have civil actions against those people — have their money, have their bank accounts frozen, their assets seized.

What to do?

‘Educate’ the public, with special emphasis on school children.

‘Film theft when it goes into schools’

“In terms of consumer messaging and education, the Industry Trust IP awareness is the primary body and they are engaged in major campaigns both to engage in explaining to people about respecting creativity and encouraging the creative industry in the UK and making sure that is supported by the UK public and by government, and also getting the message across that piracy both in terms of hard goods and in terms of online is wrong and the campaign for Industry Trust has created is a moral imperative for people not to engage in piracy,” says Leviton.

“Film Education.org is a body that works with schools and they produce materials across a whole range of topics that promote the film industry as a whole. And they produce some very interesting and very informative resources on film piracy or, as we like to call it, film theft when it goes into schools.

“And those are used in conjunction with the national curriculum. They’re very well received by educational establishments they go to.”

He adds:

“The Alliance Against IP Theft is a body that represents a number of different industries and they worked to lobby government.

“Going down to government relations you’ll see ther BVA, the British Video Association, and in terms of security measures, FACT works very closely with the Film Distributors Association and the Cinema Exhibitors Association in terms of educating people — cinema staff — about camcording, encouraging them to create the correct environment so that camcording can’t take place and rewarding cinema staff for reporting any camcording in their cinemas. We’ve paid out several thousand pounds this year already to cinema staff who’ve prevented camcording from taking place.

“As you know the UK has a particular problem with camcording. We don’t have specific legislation here and we are lobbying government to have that specific legislation introduced, although it’s going to be quite a long process to keep campaigning for that.

“We’re particularly aware this fall because we have some major movies, High-school Musical 3 opened first in the UK, and James Bond which opened this week in the UK as well, Quantum of Solace, those films … are prime targets for camcorders because that’s the first chance
camcorders are going to have to get a copy of that film.

“We are doing a lot of activity this week on Solace and we did some prevention activity last week for High-school Musical 3 as well.”

Definitely stay tuned. More to come …..

Jon Newton – p2pnet

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 14th, 2008 at 1:43 pm and is filed under MPAA News, RIAA News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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