Message from the President

"The challenge facing us is difficult and complex. At stake is the future of a whole business sector with implications that cut across many other areas of production and distribution.

It is regrettable that despite the efforts at the Community and national level by the single Member States of the European Union, the data for piracy are increasingly alarming. The phenomenon is expanding rapidly as a form of organised crime with a supra-national dimension and taking on new features as it keeps pace with technological development. It is a constantly evolving form of crime: the "pirates" continually change their strategies to modify their present scenario and carry on their clandestine activities undisturbed.

Piracy produces a mutation in the confines of the market, contaminating it, altering the equilibrium between supply and demand, generating negative effects in the whole production sector and withdrawing resources from legitimate businesses. The damage done globally to industries in the sector amount to billions of dollars.

In addition to the extensive damage done immediately and directly to the market involved, it is important to consider also the collateral but equally alarming effects: piracy produces "dirty money" which is then recycled, it threatens levels of employment in firms in this sector and those firms which derive benefits and business from it, and finally it damages the state because of tax evasion caused by the black market fostered by these illegal activities.

We are therefore faced with a cluster of related crimes which harm a wide range of interests and involve all players in the audiovisual sector as well as many others.

The subjects who are most seriously damaged by and involved in this destructive cyclone are not just the TV broadcasters but also what is known as the 'creative community': the producers of software associated with audiovisual productions, film producers, recording companies, the artists and the advanced technology companies. These all see pirates as competitors to be feared precisely because they are illegal and uncontrolled by legislative restraints of any kind.

Among the subjects damaged by piracy it is important not to overlook nations themselves, which are defrauded of legitimate revenue, and also the consumers, who - though at lower prices - acquire products without any kind of guarantee and without any after-sales protection.

It is worth stressing that when a phenomenon acquires global dimensions, no subject should feel excluded from acting to apply deterrents.
The importance of what is at stake and the subjects involved excludes any margin of tolerance toward all those who engage in piracy of this kind.
The commitment that sees us involved in the front line demands care, readiness and effort. Our commitment must take the concrete form of preventive action and the development of new strategies of repression. to deal adequately with the problem. We must not leave anything to chance but explore all possible lines of action.

The most urgent task is to inform and arouse public opinion by promoting an information campaign with the aim of determining the real extent of the phenomenon and the effects it produces, to encourage communications between operators in the sector and trade associations, to foster collaboration with law-enforcement bodies and the courts, as well as creating a wide-ranging dialogue with governments to ensure that there is constant far-reaching action to achieve our ends.

AEPOC is in the front line in achieving these objectives. Our efforts will seek steadily to defeat this threat, which is becoming daily more dangerous for the existence of our sector."

Jean Grenier