Piracy tab at $15 billion over four years

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 22 (UPI) -- Movie piracy could cost the entertainment industry $15 billion over the next four years, The Hollywood Reporter said Friday.

The paper said the Motion Picture Association of America's top anti-piracy official told a Hollywood Chamber of Commerce audience piracy could cost that much -- unless the industry acts to prevent it and enforces laws against piracy.

MPAA senior vice president John Malcolm told the audience if the movie industry doesn't act aggressively against file sharing and DVD bootlegging, it could face the same kinds of losses that the music business has experienced.

"If that happens, it means there are a lot of people in the film industry that will be out of work and out of luck," he said.

Ronald Wheeler, senior vice president for content protection at Fox Entertainment Group, said emerging technologies such as filtering software to block illegal peer-to-peer file trading could help keep piracy in check.

"The good news is that at the end of the day, this can be done," Wheeler said. "It's not an intractable problem."