Film industry representatives highlight anti-piracy measures

[Martin ◢◤]

Representatives of the American film industry have penned a letter to the US Department of Commerce regarding the trafficking of counterfeit goods and streams.

Co-written by members of the Motion Picture Association of America, the Independent Film and Television Alliance, CreativeFuture, and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the letter highlighted the increase in piracy activity and copyright infringement.

The report presented a series of recommendations for administrative action to the department, including cooperation between legitimate content platforms and the creative community, encouraging the Department of Justice to prosecute instances of online copyright infringement, and restored access to WHOIS data via the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

The differentiation between peer-to-peer networks, BitTorrent portals, direct download cyberlockers, and streaming hosting services also reinforces the scope of the current piracy problem in the online marketplace.

The letter also emphasised the threat posed by digital piracy to cybersecurity, as illicit websites often contain malware, including viruses and spyware.

The representatives who authored the report had also reached out to payment processors, online advertisers, domain name providers, online marketplaces, web hosting services and reverse proxies in an attempt to curb the current influx of digital piracy.

The report concluded by requesting the department’s endorsement of such measures to combat online copyright infringement.