Hollywood lost a record US$640 million last year to Asian criminal syndicates using cutting-edge technology to produce and export illegal copies of blockbuster films, a US industry representative said on Monday.
Michael Ellis, Asia-Pacific regional director for the Motion Picture Association (MPA), told Reuters lax laws and innovative gangs meant the revenue lost by Hollywood had grown 6 percent in the last year.
"Overall it is getting worse," said Ellis, who represents top Hollywood producers including Walt Disney Co, Sony Picture Entertainment Inc, 20th Century Fox Film Corp, and Warner Brothers to fight piracy in the region.
"Asia is really a center of piracy that is distributing products to the rest of the world."
Ellis said gangs were setting up more optical-disc factories, shifting their production from video compact discs to more advanced digital-video discs, and improving distribution.
"In 2001, 98 percent of the world's piracated discs, in relation to cases that we were involved with, were seized here in Asia. And I will say 99 percent plus were replicated here in Asia-Pacific."
The MPA says Taiwan and Malaysia are "notable hubs" for exporting pirate optical discs. But Ellis said China's 1.2 billion population was fuelling a piracy boom.
"They're not exporting in the number we see in some of the small Asian countries," Ellis said. "But they have a huge population and the piracy rate in China is 91 percent."
Ellis, in the Thai capital Bangkok for talks with anti-piracy officials, said Thailand's piracy rate of around 70 percent made the country one of his top priorities this year.
He said 51 illegal disc factories were in operation last year, from just 20 in 1999.
"You have a huge over capacity and I am afraid that the criminal gangs are using that capacity to ... to sell out on the street," Ellis said.
During the meeting with Deputy Commerce Minister Wattana Muangsuk, the MPA delegation submitted a list of factories that might produce pirated discs and urged Thailand to pass laws regulating imports of copying machinery and the raw materials needed.
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