Calling it a new phase of its education campaign against online piracy, the Motion Picture Association of America will begin placing ads in daily newspapers and consumer magazines around the country, including more than 100 college newspapers, the trade group announced June 15.
The Video Software Dealers Association praised the new phase. “Piracy, or more properly theft, is the greatest threat to the home video industry,” VSDA president Bo Andersen said in a statement.
“Because illegal movie downloading and illegal DVD copies have the potential to seriously undermine the legitimate home video market," Andersen continued, "VSDA supports educating consumers about the impact of this theft on the creative community, the entertainment retail industry, the economy, and the public and the risks to those engaged in this theft.”
The new ad campaign doesn't mean the MPAA will cease their legal efforts to stop online piracy, according to outgoing president and chief executive Jack Valenti.
"We hope this ramped-up information/educational campaign will cause those who are taking films without permission to stop their illegal activity," Valenti said announcing the campaign. "But we will keep all of our options open, including legal action. If we don't react promptly to an ascending curve of illegal uploading and downloading soon to be reinforced with dazzling speeds rising from file-trafficking networks, we will live with an intense regret."
The campaign will also reach to parents, students, and local groups, trying to press the point of why piracy is illegal, how it affects jobs and the economy, and other consequences of online piracy, the MPAA said. The group also plans to put anti-piracy messages in movie theaters around the United States.
"We have to do more to convince that minority of people who are engaged in this unlawful and infringing activity of the wrongness of their conduct," Valenti said. "We have to stem the tide of film theft online before it is too late, before it puts to peril the creative energy of the industry and the jobs of the nearly one million Americans who work within the movie industry."
