Sue me': Village Roadshow chief slams Google for 'facilitating crime'

[Len]

Village Roadshow co-chief executive Graham Burke has slammed Google for "facilitating crime" by allowing piracy, saying the multibillion-dollar company is welcome to sue him for his comments.

Mr Burke believes Google is partly responsible for hundreds of thousands of illegal downloads of the films Lion and Mad Max: Fury Road causing "millions of dollars lost to piracy".

"If piracy isn’t nailed ... the Australian film industry will be over," he said.

"It will become like a remote Los Angeles suburb."

Lion has been downloaded illegally more than 350,000 times and is likely to have been streamed more than 1 million times, he said.

With major films' success relying on ticket sales at the box office, illegal access to the films online can quickly eat into an entertainment company's bottom line.

By allowing pirate websites to be on its search engine, the film industry veteran said Google was allowing criminal activity and was "welcome" to sue him for his comments.

"We have been involved with films more than any other production company," he said.

Mr Burke has been a board member for Village Roadshow since 1988 and describes his involvement with Red Dog as "one of the great joys" of his life. It is the second-best selling DVD in Australian history behind Finding Nemo.

"I have an incredibly rich life and a large part of that has been thanks to film ... I want to put something back and if it means taking a risk then that is what is necessary," he said.

"How can you make these films commercially viable if it’s being given away free?"

One way copyright holders can stop pirate websites is by getting a court order for internet service providers to block a site. In 2016, the Federal Court ordered major piracy website Pirate Bay to be blocked in Australia.

In August, Foxtel and Village Roadshow had 59 pirate sites blocked by using these site-blocking laws. Mr Burke is a 13 per cent shareholder in Village Roadshow.

On Wednesday, the government put its site blocking laws up for review to determine if they are working and any needed changes.

Google does not actively block pirate sites, nor proxy sites that show work-arounds to reach blocked sites.

“My view is they are complicit and they are facilitating crime," he said.

Mr Burke wants the search giant to be more proactive, rather than relying copyright holders to go through the court for every pirate site.

In Korea, where Google is not the dominant search engine, local search platforms remove links to pirated content themselves.

A Google spokesman said it took the fight against online piracy "very seriously" and had invested "tens of millions of dollars" to deal with the issue.

"We down-rank sites in Search that have a large number of valid [copyright infringement] notices and ban pirate sites from our ad network."

He said Google continues to hold "meaningful and earnest conversations with industry about copyright".

Mr Burke said the company's efforts on piracy since he first raised concerns with Google Australia two years ago were not enough.

"The people [with Google] in Silicon Valley are looking at their global internet and don't think 25 million people in Australia are a priority for them," he said.

He likens it to businessman Frank Lowy allowing a shop in a Westfield shopping centre to sell stolen goods and steal its customer's credit card details.

"Frank would say he doesn’t want it in his shopping centre," he said.

Mr Burke doesn't believe Google would do the same because piracy sites are popular, attracting "eyeballs" to its search engine.

"This is revenue lost to the producer, lost to Australia and lost to taxes."

At Village Roadshow's half yearly results on Friday, posting a weak result for its cinema arm, Mr Burke told shareholders getting rid of piracy would have an "upside" for the company.

The lower earnings of $21.6 million in the six months to December 31, compared to $29.1 million in the first half of 2017, was mostly driven by a "lack of quality titles" due to scheduling.

The company also posted "disappointing" results for its theme parks.

Mr Burke said the "Dreamworld effect", after four people died in an accident on a ride in October 2016, was still being felt across its business, including Wet'n'Wild Sydney. The Sydney weather also had an impact.