MPAA budget slashed, anti-piracy crumbling?

The Motion Picture Asssociation of America, or MPAA, is receiving less and less money from Hollywood to target “pirates”. Tax records from 2010 reveal that in a period of three years the major movie studios cut their payments to the MPAA in half. As a direct result the budget of the movie industry group reached a new low of $49.6 million, causing wage and legal fee payouts to plummet.

Last week it was revealed that the RIAA, Recording Industry Association of America, also had its budget cut by a similar amount, 50%. At the RIAA, the funding cut was countered by removing 40% of staff, but at the MPAA all the staff have been kept with reduced wages.

Not even former CEO Dan Glickman could avoid a drop in income – his salary fell from $1.65 million to $1.11 million. However, that still made Glickman the best paid MPAA employee, closely followed by President Robert Pisano who resigned in 2011 after earning $1.09 million during his final year in the job.

Despite a crumbling budget the MPAA has remained relatively successful. Pulling off the Megaupload closure, SurfTheChannel shutdown, NinjaVideo seizure and a whole other number of domain seizures.

The MPAA has managed to retain its lobbying budget at $4.6 million, since it desperately needs to lobby to keep securing its funding. Yet you wonder how much longer organisations like this can keep going when they don’t even make a profit for the artists and media labels that sponsor them. Ultimately there is no point for entertainment professionals going after pirates if they lose money in the process, going after illegal downloaders has been shown to increase illegal downloading in some regions as it creates more resentment towards the entertainment industry.

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