Intellectual Property – and Why It Works For All of Us

At this time every year, we commemorate World IP Day. It’s an opportunity not only to revisit why intellectual property is so important to all of us, but also to take measure of the problems that we are facing, and the progress we are making.

This year’s theme for World IP Day is “intellectual property and sports,” and while that may send your mind racing to baseball diamonds, soccer fields, or basketball courts, I’d like to point your attention in a more specific direction: the legal enjoyment of it.  

Whether you love watching sports on television, or if you tend toward movies and other programming, there’s never been a better time to enjoy your passion – safely and legally. That reflects our ongoing mission to ensure that the entertainment that brings such joy to our hearts and illuminates our lives equally benefits the creators who make it possible. 

You might say, we just want to see a fair playing field.

But even though creators have every right in the world to be compensated for what they do, it’s not only a matter of moral ownership. It’s also about our economy. The movie and television industry employs 2.6 million Americans. It pumps $100,000 per day into a local community when shooting a television show on location, and $250,000 a day when shooting a film. It also generates a $10.3 billion trade surplus.

Creativity doesn’t just enrich the soul. It enriches the economy. But piracy undercuts everything, and does so in a number of ways, including through the widespread use of piracy devices and apps.

As USTR observed in its recent report on notorious markets, BeOutQ and other infringing devices and apps provide illegal access to movie and television content through a variety of means. They include downloading and streaming content as well as unauthorized streaming of live television and sporting events.

The damage has a rippling effect. Content creators, including our member studios, are the immediate losers. They are deprived of the fruits of their labors, including high-quality film and television productions, and sports rights, which undermines the growing Middle East marketplace. 

Piracy also undermines the license fees that distributors pay content creators – and on which they depend. It becomes harder for legitimate services to continue investing in diverse and compelling content.

Artists, lawful businesses, and viewers all lose out.

So do the consumers who visit pirate sites, unaware that those sites are being employed as bait to infect them with malware, raising the risk of identity theft and cyberattacks.

The point is, piracy bites the very hand that feeds it, jeopardizing the availability of the content viewers are seeking in the first place. By protecting intellectual property rights, and encouraging all creators to continue to do what they do best, we can keep creativity flowing. We can keep artist’s compensation flowing. And we can promote the healthy environment creativity needs to thrive.

Our industry produces more than 700 movies a year and the number of scripted original television shows viewable over traditional and online services has reached a staggering 495. Protecting intellectual property not only makes these choices available, but ensures that the industry remains robust and productive. And that means a continuing stream of new, entertaining creative content.

The good news is, audiences can choose from more than 140 lawful online sources for watching movie and television content in the United States.

In fact, in 2018, Americans used those services to the tune of 11.5 billion views for movies and 170.6 billion views for television episodes.

We believe that these legal channels point to a better way for everyone. And the MPAA looks forward to continuing its work with the U.S. government and with nations across the globe to ensure storytellers can continue creating and offering compelling move and television content the world over.