Agência Brasil
Brasília – For a three-month period, beginning next week, some 1,800 movie theatres around Brazil will be showing a series of shorts, each about 45 seconds long, on the damage done by piracy. The film shorts will compare piracy to robbery and attempt to make people aware of the problems created when they buy counterfeit films or make unauthorized downloads.
There are 120,000 jobs in the Brazilian audiovisual sector which pays some US$64.4 million (R$200 million) in taxes annually. However, it is estimated that losses due to piracy reach almost double that – around US$119.5 million (R$370 million), not to mention the loss of 17,000 jobs. Out of every three CDs or DVDs sold in Brazil last year, one was pirate.
A congressional investigation (CPI) discovered that piracy in Brazil is a big business run by organized crime, literally. "We have to make people aware of the fact that piracy causes unemployment, fraud and tax evasion, besides strengthening organized crime," says deputy Luiz Antonio de Medeiros (PL-SP), who was the chairman of the CPI.