Following massive “losses” in the music industry due to blatant piracy on the Internet, moviemakers are now bracing themselves for more losses as web connection in the rest of the civilized world continue to get faster.
The warning came after music labels cried foul over the continuous proliferation of online piracy, which according to experts, could spread to movies as the web connections of the people speeds up.
Music labels, based on reports, said that they are losing huge amount of revenue due to piracy and are now struggling to convince online consumers to pay for the downloaded music files.
‘This prompted the recording companies to take action and filed cases against anyone who were caught sharing music files illegally through peer-to-peer file-sharing websites.
Based on assessments done by the industry, more than 40 billion songs have been illegally shared on the web since 2008 with the piracy rate booming to an unprecedented 95 percent.
Music labels urged courts all over the world to impose high-penalties to those who will get convicted.
However, United Nations’ World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) director general Francis Gurry opposed its implementation, saying that heavy punishments to users would be a counterproductive move by the companies.
“What we need to do is to reeducate the public about the issue and make them understand that this is not a case of victimless crime,” Gurry stressed.
He also cited that the music and movie industry should make these files available to the people at a flat rate to further avoid losing money.
“Both the music and movie industry is now under the most severe stress and making the transition from the physical to the digital world would further add up to that,” he said.
“Now that the larger and faster bandwidth capacity and the computer technology improving, the problem will now be similar to films and clips online,” Gurry added.