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MPAA officials to meet with students 7:07 p.m., May 9, 2005--Two top officials from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) will visit the University of Delaware campus Wednesday and Thursday, May 11-12, to speak with students and UD officials about efforts to stop piracy of entertainment products on college campuses. James Spertus, vice president of the MPAA and director of its U.S. anti-piracy efforts, and Richard L. Taylor, MPAA senior vice president of external affairs and education, will participate in an open conversation on the topic from 7:45-9 p.m., Thursday, May 12, in the Trabant University Theatre. The conversation will be followed by a screening of the new action thriller, Unleashed, which stars Jet Li, Morgan Freeman, Bob Hoskins and Kerry Condon. The movie, scheduled for release May 13 in the U.S., was directed by Louis Leterrier and written by Luc Besson. The Delaware Undergraduate Student Congress (DUSC) is sponsoring the conversation with students. UD has been actively working to quell entertainment piracy through its responsible computing program and the Code of the Web educational effort, and UD President David P. Roselle last fall invited Spertus to come to campus to see what is being done. Spertus joined MPAA from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the central district of California, where he served as an assistant U.S. attorney for seven and one-half years. With MPAA, he has focused exclusively on criminal intellectual property offenses, including cases involving anti-piracy, economic espionage and violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. He also coordinates many educational outreach programs. Taylor joined the MPAA in 1995 and is responsible for forging partnerships and strategic alliances on behalf of the organization and for increasing its outreach to students, teachers and administrators at schools that serve students of all ages. “The primary message I hope to deliver during my visit to UD is that it is important to protect copyrights,” Spertus said. “As you are aware, the problem of unauthorized peer-to-peer, or P2P, file swapping of copyrighted music, movies, software and other material continues to grow on many college and university campuses, and it is a widespread problem that extends well beyond campuses. “My hope,” he said, “is to enter into a dialogue with students and campus leaders about this problem in an effort to raise student awareness to these issues.” Copyright piracy on campuses “is often so widely accepted that many students see nothing wrong with it,” Spertus said. “With virtually all universities now connected to the Internet, the scale of swapping copyrighted material on campuses has reached epidemic proportions. P2P networks have made it possible for tens of millions of people to steal and distribute copyrighted movies and recordings to countless other individuals, and super fast broadband networks have enabled this massive theft to be accomplished quickly and conveniently. Several million users engage in the unlawful theft of copyrighted materials every single day.” Spertus added that while “broadband and networking advances clearly promote the healthy exchange of ideas, research and information, they also enable millions of people to steal and swap copyrighted material at a rate never before imagined. “We are trying to raise student awareness to these issues in a variety of ways, and my trip to UD is one step in this effort,” he said. Article by Neil Thomas To learn how to subscribe to UDaily, click here. |
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