The Motion Picture Association is boasting the results of recent anti-piracy efforts in Asia, claiming that the export of illegally camcorded movies dropped by roughly 40 percent.
"Operation ZoomOut," which ran from the end of last November to January 31, 2009, entailed nearly 450 raids in China, Hong Kong, Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand. Police arrested 370 suspected pirates and seized more than 4 million optical discs, the association said in a press release. As a result, the number of illegally-recorded movies sourced from the region dropped from 2.4 to 1.4 per week. The MPA -- the Motion Picture Association of America's international arm -- generally conducts these kinds of raids twice a year.
A training program, called "Make a Difference 2," will follow the busts. It's supposed to teach cinema staff and local law enforcement to recognize and apprehend people who are making bootlegs in the movie theater. There's talk of keeping police officers on patrol, offering rewards for turning in bootleggers and using night vision to catch criminals in the act, but it's not clear how the MPA plans to put these ideas in motion.
The MPA loves to flex its muscles over these efforts. Of the association's last five press releases, four of them are about piracy busts, and the fifth -- regarding a new MPA office in Mumbai -- mentions intellectual property rights enforcement as one of the major problems to tackle in the country. It's a sad reminder of both the amount of piracy that's happening in Asia and how little other news the association has to report.
