Gareth Manning, Gleaner Writer
GRAHAM
PALACE AMUSEMENT Company says it is losing up to 27 per cent of its potential cinema admissions due to piracy.
Director, Melanie Graham says the company is currently in talks with the Minister of National Security to counter the problem.
"People do not realise that what they are doing is illegal. You certainly can't copy a movie and rent or sell it" she says.
CINEMAS CLOSED
Palace Amusement operated six cinemas in the island. Two of its Corporate Area cinemas have closed however. Island Cinema in the Island Life Mall closed last November due to change in the ownership of the mall.
The company currently operates only the Carib 5 in Cross Roads, Palace Cineplex in Liguanea the Portmore Palace, Palace Multiplex in Montego Bay and the Odeon in Mandeville.
Graham says there are no legal entities in the island that have the right to download and rent or sell movies before they are released to general audiences on digital video disks (dvd) or video, although there are many enterprises across the island doing so.
Lanette Fisher, programmes manager at the Jamaica Intellectual Property Office confirms that the illegal copying of movie is a booming industry.
She explains that many of these enterprises copy movies by recording them while they are being shown in theatres or through unauthorised downloads from the Internet. They are subsequently sold or rented.
Carl Hamilton a director in the Ministry of National Security says an Anti-Piracy committee has been set up to deal with the issue. The committee which was headed by the Ministry of Tourism and Industry was formally set up to deal with music theft, but the committee's portfolio was recently expanded to deal with movie theft and as well as other forms of intellectual piracy.
The committee which is made up of over 30 agencies including the ministry, the Organised Crime Unit and the Jamaica Intellectual Property Office (JIPO) has made some arrests, Hamilton disclosed, but the arrests have been few and none have gone before the courts.
The committee is to meet next month to discuss issues relating to movie theft.
Meanwhile JIPO is conducting its own campaign to quell piracy. Fisher says the agency has been running an education campaign particularly in the rural areas. She explains that civilians as well as police do not understand the nature of intellectual piracy and so the agency has been educating the police, who in turn educate the perpetrators before they arrest them. She says the campaign has been successful so far, particularly in the parish of Manchester where it started, and is expected to spread to other parishes soon.
"It's been a dry, movie season so if the movie industry could introduce another gigantic movie blockbuster, for instance a Matrix, that should spruce box office revenue," the analyst said.
Along with its own cinemas, Palace distributes movies to Cove Cinema in Ocho Rios and and has exclusive rights for film distribution to major companies and independent companies for Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.
