“Piracy is a Crime” is the new UK£1.5 million ( €2.25 million) campaign from the UK film industry, launching today.
Film makers have grouped together with retailers like Asda and HMV to form the Industry Trust for Intellectual Property Awareness, and have predicted an annual loss of about UK£1 billion (€1.5 billion) to the film industry in 2007.
To combat this, the new campaign has a tough new message for the public.
A new trailer seeks to educate the public that film piracy has links to organised crime and funds terrorist activities. By issuing posters featuring a gunman, the ITIPA is hoping to capitalise on the public’s fear of terrorism to discourage the public from buying dodgy DVDs down the market.
The majority of public opinion seems to be that piracy is a “soft crime” with no real victims, whereas low risks and high returns are making it an attractive option for criminal gangs – raids to premises involved in piracy have also unearthed drugs, pornography and weapons.
FACT
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Fraser Lovatt
Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.
Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.
At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.
After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.
These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?
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With some crap actor getting paid 20 million for a film, I’d rather see money go into organized crime and terrorists.