Camera, Action, Copyright

"It is not only about economics, it is about dreaming." - Dr. Ajay Dua, Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry.

As stars and hot-shot directors set the paparazzi spinning this month at the 60th Cannes Film Festival, the film industry appears as the very essence of glamor. The same could never be said of copyright. But beneath the glitz and the box office hits, a solid foundation of copyright and related rights is what allows movie-makers to earn a return on their investment, and enables the film industry to thrive.

And thrive it does. In India, the Rs. 85 billion (US$2 billion) film industry is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 16 percent for the next 5 years¹. In the U.S., the motion picture and television industry provided jobs for more than 1.3 million people in 2005². South Korean blockbusters with ticket sales of over 10 million³ have fueled the explosion of "Kim Chic" popular culture in the region. Film production in Morocco and Iran is flourishing. The list goes on...

Films are highly collaborative works. In developing a film from original concept to final cut a filmmaker invests in the works of numerous other creators - scriptwriters, song writers and score composers, computer animation artists, set and costume designers, - and of course performers. Contractual agreements which define the ownership and use of the multiple creative inputs are necessary to protect the interests of all concerned, to avoid costly disputes, to facilitate financing and distribution, and to defend against illegal copying.

Threat

There lies the rub. Dizzying advances in digital technology are proving both boon and bane to the film industry. While video did not kill the movies, as the film studios of the 1980s feared it would, (see Fifty Years of the Video Cassette Recorder, WIPO Magazine 2006/06), the massive scale of digital piracy today is widely perceived as the greatest single threat to those whose livelihoods depend on the industry. Technical protection mechanisms, such as digital rights management (DRM), have not proven a panacea, and industry groups in developed and developing countries alike are petitioning for tightened copyright legislation and for more effective enforcement mechanisms.

One novel approach to enforcement, which the Malaysian government is pursuing in cooperation with the Motion Picture Association, is featured in our article, Hounding Out Piracy (page 10). Meanwhile, governments...