A. The Industry Trust was set up by a group of organisations ranging from film studios to retailers.  It works to raise awareness of the positive role copyright plays in protecting creative ideas and the livelihoods of the 150,000 people whose jobs are supported by film and TV in the UK.

A. The film industry is heavily reliant on reinvestment – it ploughs the money it makes from one film into the next and so on.  The less money there is to reinvest, the more our industry dries up.  At the moment, Film Council stats show the industry is losing half a billion to copyright theft every year, which is money that could go a long way to making more films.

For all the big successful blockbuster films, there are those which the industry took a risk on – put money into but they didn’t work.  1 in 30 films that don’t cover their cost at the box office.  It’s really important that people in the industry feel they can still take these risks as otherwise we will lose the diversity of films.  If downloading illegally continues – then there is a real risk that we will end up with all our films following popular formats – as they will be the only ones which get funding.

A. Conservative Film Council stats suggest that at the moment, copyright theft is costing the industry around half a billion a year… that’s a lot of money that could have gone into new films.

A. I can’t speak for iTunes, or Apple, but we are looking at ways as an industry to give you more options when it comes to buying films.  Earlier this year we launched the FindAnyFilm website to help people find the best value, legitimate version of the film they’re after.  If you search for a particular title, the results list where you can buy the film, both in hard copy and as a download, and are sorted by price.  Hopefully this will help make online content accessible and affordable. 

A. Unfortunately copyright theft is often seen as victimless, but I bet the hundreds of people who appear on the credits of a film roll don’t feel that way about it.  If everyone chose to buy knock-offs, there’d be no more work for them.  Plus many of them rely on repeat fees and royalties, which they only get when someone buys or downloads a genuine version of the film or TV show they’re in.

A. The vast majority of people would prefer to have the original – and hopefully know that their money goes back into the industry and those that have helped create the work.  With the prices of legal content falling all the time and legal movie downloading services improving daily, hopefully people are starting to realise that online content can be accessible and affordable.  You don’t have to sacrifice on quality to get content at a good price.

A. The industry is playing its part in trying to protect copyright by shedding more light on the negative impact that copyright theft has, especially on the people working in the industry.  But you’re right, it’s too big a nut to crack for us to be working in isolation.  We won’t succeed without help from the ISPs.  The Government is talking to them at the moment about how we might reach a joint solution.

A.In the vast majority of cases, where you see people selling illegal DVDs at markets or in pubs, they’re not a one-man band making a bit of money on the side.  They’re part of huge organised crime rackets.  DVD selling is just the tip of the ice-berg - these gangs often deal in other more serious criminal offences, such as weapon and people smuggling.  FACT (the Federation Against Copyright Theft) is the organisation that deals with this side of things.  Their website has a lot more information about this.

A. The film and TV industry is working to remove these from any future releases so you should see increasingly less of them. These were commissioned years ago when the thinking was very different. We decided to stop using them in 2007 but we know that they do still pop up every now and again, and of course we can’t change the old DVD’s. We all agree it’s time to move on and we know it’s long overdue that the industry champions people like you guys, who buy our content.

A. Back in 2004 when these ads were launched, few people recognised that copyright theft could be a criminal offence. They were created to help raise awareness of this. Prosecution of DVD sellers and producers of unauthorised content showed links to other unsavoury criminal activity and we wanted to raise awareness with local policing and trading standards. The approach definitely seemed to work. By 2007, 75% of people recognised piracy as a crime. With such high awareness now, we do recognise that they are not as relevant anymore, which is why the campaign has been replaced with the You Make The Movies cinema trailers that thank the public for buying the real deal.

A. Unauthorised copies of films both on and offline vary in quality. Some are good, but from the complaints we receive, they are very hit and miss. This makes it even more important for the film and TV industry to help people to understand where their money goes when they buy the real deal. Hundreds of thousands of everyday people working in film and TV - from runners and producers to cinema staff and DVD shop workers - rely on the public to keep buying cinema tickets, DVDs and legal downloads. If everyone chose to access unauthorised content, many jobs would be lost and many TV shows and films couldn't get made.