E&Y: Industry co-operation can help curb piracy
November 21, 2011
By Colin Mann
Co-operation between the entertainment, social media and CE manufacture sectors can help curb piracy of intellectual property, according to an Ernst and Young (E&Y) study presented at the Forum d’Avignon event attended by delegates from the worlds of culture, the creative industries, the economy and the media .
According to E&Y, the onus for enforcement of IP laws needs to be on all the members of the media supply chain, including owners, aggregators, distributors and electronics manufacturers.
The report,which studied the laws and IP enforcement in 16 countries, suggested that content distributors and aggregators such as Facebook and Google have shown greater interest in protecting and selling of legally produced music and videos because it increases their revenues, while maintaining brand image.“This convergence means that distributors and aggregations have greater interest in protecting professionally produced content,” the report said. “They want to profit as they sell legal music and videos to their customers and they recognise that their own growth depends on delivering secure content,” said E&Y.
The report suggested that telcos could consider looking at providing greater mobile broadband access to legally-produced content so as to curb ever-growing downloads and streaming demand. “Telecommunications companies may have an equally strong in prioritisation certain types of content to limit the significant broadband investments required to accommodate ever-growing downloads and video streaming,” it said.
Connected devices with software which recognised legally-produced content would not only increase the devices’ value but also protect IP content, suggested the report. “Tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices present significant opportunities not only to boost revenues, but to protect IP using technology enabled into the devices,” said E&Y.
In terms of content protection, the report emphasised the use of digital tools such as cloud computing, fingerprinting and watermarking of IP products. “By focusing on partnerships, agreements and the use of technology to ensure that rights are protected and monetisation opportunities exploited, all players in this new digital marketplace can benefit,” the report suggested.