Watch Out, all movie pirates!

The trailer will appear prior to film presentations in cinemas, broadcast on free and cable TV and run on VCDs and DVDs.

The trailer, featuring wellknown local actress and singer Marsha Watanapanich - who provided the voiceover - aims to raise awareness of illegal camcording in cinemas. The practice is particularly damaging because it usually occurs at the very start of the movie distribution cycle, affecting the film's economic prospects.

Since the beginning of the year, 44 instances of camcording have been reported in cinemas in the AsiaPacific.

A comprehensive study aimed at producing a more accurate picture of the impact that piracy has on the film industry, including losses due to Internet piracy, recently calculated that MPA studios lost US$6.1 billion (Bt210 billion) to worldwide piracy in 2005.

About $2.4 billion was lost to bootlegging, or obtaining movies by either purchasing an illegally copied VHS/DVD/VCD or acquiring hard copies of bootleg movies.

About $1.4 billion was lost to illegal copying and $2.3 billion to Internet piracy.

Of the $6.1 billion in lost revenue to the studios, about $1.2 billion came from piracy across the AsiaPacific, while piracy in the US accounted for $1.3 billion.

In 2006, the MPA's operations in the AsiaPacific investigated more than 30,000 cases of piracy and assisted law enforcement officials in conducting nearly 12,400 raids.

These activities resulted in the seizure of more than 35 million illegal optical discs, 50 factory opticaldisc production lines and 4,482 opticaldisc burners, as well as the initiation of more than 11,000 legal actions.

The Nation