U.S., EU, GREECE SETTLE LONG-RUNNING TV PIRACY DISPUTE
U.S., European Union (EU) and Greece informed World Trade Organization (WTO) that they had reached “a mutually satisfactory solution” to problem of pirating of American movies and TV programs by Greek broadcast stations. In releases issued by U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) Robert Zoellick and EU late Thurs. and Fri., 3 parties said they finally settled dispute after more than 10 years of complaints by American film industry about rampant copyright violations. Relieved MPAA officials, who had pressed for end to problem, said settlement resolved worst case of over- the-air TV piracy in world by far. “I think the problem is solved now,” MPAA Trade & Federal Affairs Vp Bonnie Richardson said. “Obviously, we'll keep an eye on it.”
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
Although theft of U.S. cable and satellite TV signals is quite common around globe, Greece stood out because its local and often national TV channels routinely showed American films and TV shows without obtaining copyright licenses for them. MPAA officials said Greek stations simply took American movie and TV series videotapes and ran them on air, never obtaining any authorization. “Analog, terrestrial TV piracy is a very rare thing,” Richardson said. “In Europe, Asia, South America, it just doesn’t happen very often.”
MPAA officials estimated that Greek TV piracy rate reached 100% at its zenith in 1980s after country’s national TV monopoly was broken. They said piracy rate still hovered near 50% mark as recently as 1997, when they said problem cost U.S. and other non- Greek motion picture producers $50 million annually. Piracy rate since has dropped to estimated 5%, costing non-Greek movie producers anywhere from $5 million to $10 million per year.
At MPAA’s prodding, U.S. opened dispute settlement proceedings in WTO against Greece and European Community nearly 3 years ago, charging that Greece didn’t provide adequate standards of copyright protection and enforcement. Since then, Greece has passed law to close TV stations immediately if they were found to be infringing copyrights. Country also has begun prosecuting offending stations much more aggressively, winning first criminal convictions for TV piracy. Now, under settlement, Greek govt. has agreed to take action against any increase in TV piracy and to continue to enforce its intellectual property laws.
MPAA Chmn. Jack Valenti praised Zoellick for winning commitment from Greek govt. to “take effective enforcement measures” against unlicensed TV stations. Valenti said case “illustrated how effective this new multilateral trade tool (WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS) can be in ensuring full respect for U.S. intellectual property rights.” He said group expected U.S. to keep aggressively using “the dispute settlement mechanism in the TRIPS agreement, as well as bilateral dialog” to maintain pressure on other countries to protect American copyrights.
Richardson said MPAA now would turn its focus elsewhere but saw few parallels with Greek broadcast piracy problem. “There is no other candidate out there,” she said. “There’s a handful of this going on in Sicily or southern Italy, but not much.” However, she said signal piracy problems continued to fester in Caribbean, India, northern tier of Latin America and elsewhere. - -Alan Breznick, Tack Nail