MPAA fires a warning shot
Ads presage anti-swap suits
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WASHINGTON -- The Motion Picture Assn. of America put fileswappers in the crosshairs Tuesday, as topper Jack Valenti ramped up a new anti-piracy ad campaign and the org signaled the possibility of lawsuits.
Taking a page from the music biz playbook, the MPAA launched a stepped-up education campaign aimed at convincing parents to spend more time monitoring their kids' Internet use. The campaign marks the first salvo in a move toward the type of lawsuits against file-swappers that the RIAA has been engaged in for the past year.
As part of the multimillion-dollar PR drive, the MPAA Tuesday placed ads in seven major papers around the country, including the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and USA Today.
Under the heading "Parental Guidance Suggested," the MPAA ads contain a simulation of a movie rating and the words "Illegal downloading: inappropriate for all ages."
Ad warns parents that failure to prevent their kids from using unauthorized Web sites to swap movies and music could lead to "substantial penalties" and leave personal computers vulnerable to an influx of pornography, computer viruses, identify theft and insertions of spyware, which allows outsiders to monitor personal Internet surfing.
"Talk to your kids ... help them understand the serious consequences of illegal downloading and the risks it imposes," the ad implores parents.
The ads are the first step in an aggressive education campaign expected to lay the groundwork for the MPAA to follow the recording industry's controversial lead and begin this fall to sue individuals who illegally download content, industry sources attest.
Most of the studios endorsed a plan to sue illegal downloaders earlier this year, but Disney has held out, concerned that doing so would further tarnish its family-friendly image in a particularly bruising year for the Mouse House.
While several industry sources vow a plan is in place to take legal action this fall, Valenti maintains that suits are only an option and are not inevitable.
"We're not going to rule out any option," he told Daily Variety Tuesday. "We're not determined that we're going to sue or not sue. ... We're trying to persuade people of the wrongness of their actions, that taking a creative work without permission from its owner is wrong."
The MPAA's campaign will continue in the next weeks and months and feature other ads in newspapers and consumer magazines across the country, as well as in more than 100 college newspapers when students return to campuses this fall.
The MPAA also will expand education outreach efforts in movie theaters, begun last year when it launched two sets of trailers designed to show how piracy hurts the bottom lines of all industry workers, not just wealthy actors and studio execs.
MPAA execs are in talks with the National Assn. of Theater Owners about placing antipiracy messages as displays in lobbies or at box offices and concession stands.
As part of the effort, MPAA is working with 120 colleges and universities to help develop codes of conduct for student computer use on campus, as a way to curb piracy and combat complaints that students' use of peer-to-peer networks to download movies and music is clogging networks.
Movie industry trade group also plans to promote legal online movie sites such as CinemaNow and Movielink and will ramp up its monitoring of illegal movie-swapping levels online.
Valenti estimates the industry loses $3.5 billion each year in hard-goods piracy, but the numbers on online downloading are more difficult to assess. The MPAA estimates 400,000 to 600,000 films are illegally downloaded each day; org plans to step up research efforts to provide a more accurate gauge.
