Europe, Middle East and Africa

Extending from Iceland in the North to the most southerly tip of South Africa; and from Ireland in the West to the furthest borders of Russia in the East and points in between. The EMEA office of the MPA based in Brussels represents the interests of the seven major US producers in an incredibly diverse market. At a national level the MPA are active in more than 35 countries in the region.

The MPA’s key priorities are: Content Protection (through legislation, technology and enforcement), Market Access, Content Regulation and issues associated with the Internet.

General MPA responsibilities in the region include:

• EU and government relations; championing the cause of strong legislation to protect rightsholders’ needs and interests; working to eliminate restrictive trade regulations and non-tariff trade barriers to allow free competition in the international marketplace;

• Acting as a liaison between its member companies and agencies and departments of the European and International institutions and Governments on matters related to international commerce; negotiating on industry-wide issues related to the theatrical presentation, home video distribution, television syndication, and transmission of television programs and films;

• Working with film industries and creative communities throughout the region in pursuit of common interests

• Assisting in the drafting of international treaties that affect the legal protection, marketing, sales, leasing, taxation and distribution of the products of the U.S. film industry;

• Management of relations with collection societies;

• Representing the content industry interests in the development of digital standards and technical measures in particular relating to the digital world;

• The direction of an anti-piracy program

Anti-Piracy:

Anti-Piracy actions are taken by the individual Anti-Piracy Organizations nationally but are supervised by the Anti-Piracy team based in Brussels. The piracy problems and related issues (legal, cultural, economic) vary from country to country. The key piracy issues in Europe are internet piracy, particularly illegal downloading from P2P systems, imports of pirate DVDs from Asia, the manufacture of pirate DVDs in Russia and their export to other European markets, and increased burning of DVD-Rs and CD-Rs in countries across the region.

Internet piracy is growing at a faster rate in Europe than anywhere else worldwide. This is due to rapid broadband take-up, weak laws in certain instances, and lenient public and official perceptions. The countries in the region with the most “broadband users” are Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Spain, Netherlands and Belgium. In countries with broadband penetration rates roughly similar to the U.S. (Belgium, UK, France, Netherlands), the main Internet piracy problem is the use of P2P systems. In countries with very high broadband penetration rates, high download speeds and monthly download quotas (e.g., the Nordic countries), the main problems are the use of “direct connection” applications such as DC++, “swarming” systems such as BitTorrent and simple FTP servers.

The attitudes of key policy makers towards illegal Internet activities are beginning to improve, helped by the efforts of the European Commission and motivated national governments. The French Government, for example, has taken the lead in trying to compel key interested parties to establish a series of commitments that seek to address digital piracy, while encouraging legal services.

Despite such promising initiatives, progress towards compliance with Europe’s TRIPs obligation to address illegal filesharing in Europe has been patchy. France (where a number of courts have imposed suspended prison terms and fines on P2P filesharers) and Denmark (where the local anti-piracy program has successfully pursued civil claims against heavy DC++ users) have led the way in successfully seeking remedies from the courts. In addition, there have been a number of limited but highly successful local initiatives to secure criminal enforcement against Internet piracy that is commercial, organized or on a large scale, particularly in Germany. In other countries, such as Sweden, official efforts against endemic online piracy have been weak.

Despite ever-increasing enforcement activity and seizures of pirate discs by the MPA’s 35 anti-piracy programs in the region, the problem of optical disc piracy continues to grow. In the first half of 2005, pirate DVD seizures in the EMEA region exceeded 3.6 million discs. Seizures of burned DVD-Rs grew by 70% in the first six months to almost 2 million discs, and seizures of DVD-R burners jumped by 32% in the same period to almost 3,000. Local DVD-R burning across EMEA is being fuelled by rising Internet downloading, lower prices for burners and for blank media, and by increased Customs and local anti-piracy program vigilance against pirate imports of pressed discs. Particularly noteworthy is the explosive increase of DVD-R burning in the UK during 2005, as Asian pirates reconfigure their business in an attempt to outflank our effective work with UK Customs and with law enforcement authorities in Asia, particularly in Malaysia and Pakistan.

In other markets, such as Germany, pirate CD-Rs and DVD-Rs remain a major concern. These optical discs are sourced from the Internet and distributed on the Internet via websites and auction sites. Street sales of pirate CD-Rs and DVD-Rs plague the markets in Italy, Spain, and Ireland. Heightened enforcement efforts by the authorities in Portugal and Turkey, however, working with our local anti-piracy organizations, have yielded excellent results, illustrating that where governments show the will to combat piracy, substantial improvements can be achieved.

Illegal DVD plants in Russia are yet another growing source for pirate optical discs. Russia has become one of the world’s largest producers and distributors of illegal optical media material. In addition to the domestic problem this presents, it is believed that Russian DVD plants are now manufacturing between 50 and 80 million DVDs a year for export to markets outside Russia. Pirate optical discs of all kinds manufactured in Russia’s existing plants have been found in some 27 countries worldwide. Markets in the EMEA region that have been negatively impacted by imports of pirate Russian DVDs include Poland, Estonia, Finland, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Germany, Israel, the United Kingdom and Turkey. Despite increased activity by law enforcement authorities (raids and prosecutions, especially in recent weeks and, notably, against plants located on Government defense facilities), and the seizure year to date of over 5 million pirate DVDs, Russia’s DVD manufacturing capacity continues to grow at an alarming rate and the piracy level shows no sign of abating. Widespread corruption within the entire law enforcement community (police, prosecutors and judges), coupled with the involvement of organized criminal syndicates and the continuing absence of deterrent sentencing from the courts, create an extremely difficult and dangerous environment within which the local anti-piracy program (RAPO) must operate.