Studios To Embed Personnel At U.S. Government IP Center As Part Of Anti-Piracy Effort

deadline.com:

The lead agency set up to coordinate anti-piracy efforts across the government will soon have studio “embed” to help them track theft of movies and TV shows.The Motion Picture Association and the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, a worldwide anti-piracy coalition, expanded an existing framework agreement with the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center.Steve Francis, Executive Associate Director for Homeland Security Investigations, told Deadline that the embed “was one of the areas we thought would have the most impact because we would have a subject matter expert on site, not only working with our folks at the national level, but also supporting some of our investigative efforts, both domestically and around the globe.”A major focus has been of streaming sites offering consumers pirated movies and TV shows.

On Monday, a British man, George Bridi, was sentenced to 22-months in prison after pleading guilty to involvement in an online piracy ring known as the Sparks Group.

He plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to criminally infringe copyrighted works.Francis said that the IPR Center’s coordination with the private sector is codified in the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act, with the partnerships applying not just to movies and TV shows by to pharmaceuticals, the recording industry, luxury goods and automotive.He said that “without the private sector industry across all those sectors, we wouldn’t be very successful in our enforcement efforts.” The idea is that HSI field agents will have a “direct line” to MPA investigators on criminal digital piracy cases.“They are the rights holder,” Francis said. “The U.S.