The Interior Ministry held meetings this week with the Egyptian Chamber of Cinemas to discuss ways of preventing film piracy, especially the practice of filming movies in theaters with hand-held cameras and copying them onto CDs.
The ministry recommended the appointment of an officer at each theater and the placing of devices to detect cameras.
“We conduct daily campaigns aimed at the shops that sell CDs of pirated films,” said Assistant Interior Minister Hamdi Abdel Kerim. “But instead of appointing ministry personnel, perhaps it's better that we train theater employees and provide them with a hot-line by which they can report illicit filming.”
Cinema Syndicate Chairman Mosaad Foda agreed with Abdel Kerim and offered to appoint syndicate personnel for the purpose.
Film producer Isaad Younis, for her part, said her last film, "Prince of Seas," lost millions of Egyptian pounds worth of revenue due to film piracy.
“There were ten million downloads of the film from the Internet,” she said. “If only 20 percent of these had seen the movie in theaters, we would have generated LE38 million in ticket sales.”
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
