Businessmen nucleated in the Argentine Union of Video Editors (AUV) said yesterday that, as a result of the advance of piracy and taxes, video clubs will disappear within six months. "Not only that," Daniel Parise, head of Transeuropa-SBP, later told this newspaper. "Nor is it unlikely that, in a not too distant time, in Argentina the legal video market will disappear completely, as happened in Peru."
The figures revealed at the meeting raise the volume of the pirate market in Argentina close to one billion pesos, while the legal one today does not exceed 70 million, that is, it does not even reach 10% of the illegal. The businessmen pointed out that 90% of the copies of films that are in circulation are pirates, and before the advance of this illegal practice, more than 10 thousand people lost their jobs due to the closure of the video clubs.
For the activity, the latest blow is the call for creditors of Blockbuster in its US parent company. This had immediate effects on the rest of the countries. "I think Blockbuster is the clearest case of those companies that did everything according to the law, and that's why they were founded," Parise adds. "In Argentina, in addition, not only does video pay VAT, unlike the book, but the video tax decreed by the Parisier management in the Incaa in the 90s, when the reality was diametrically different and there was no piracy or Internet downloads. Argentina's Blockbuster, for example, paid 11 million pesos in video tax, and its balance for the year was negative. In other territories, such as Mexico, where piracy is also high, there is still a high consumption and Blockbuster invoiced 30 million dollars.
The illegal business of selling films amounts to 70 million copies, while only 20 percent of the market is legal. Aldo Fernández Sánchez, president of AUV, indicated that the Blockbuster chain in the United States decided to "let go of its hand" to operations in Argentina. In the last three years Blockbuster, dedicated to the rental and sale of DVD movies, closed 46 stores and eliminated 564 jobs. For film publishing companies, blockbuster's sharp drop in marketing will see revenue drop by 20 percent this year.
Asked what the reality was like in other countries in the region, Parise told this newspaper that "Uruguay is the country that best defends itself. While piracy also exists, combat is strong and tolerance low. But, in addition, there the audiovisual product does not pay VAT and there is no video tax as here. Chile also has a good policy, as does Colombia. On the other hand, in Peru there is no more legal video market, and Venezuela is about to reach the same situation. We fear that, if we go on this path, we will find ourselves in that state. There is no longer in Peru, for example, legal video editing either, not just marketing."
Parise's company, whose flow of editing of Argentine films was one of the highest of the few surviving video labels after the fall of LKTel and Gativideo (those that survive are also AVH and Blueshine, which edits the material of Disney and other majors, in addition to other minor labels) announced that next year it will cease in the edition of national films that do not exceed 70 or 80 thousand spectators in the rooms. "It's over. This no longer has viability," he told this newspaper.
He also said that, in Argentina, there are already huge areas where there are no longer video clubs or legal video points of sale (all the northern provinces and some of the coast, for example). More than 2500 video clubs closed their doors in the last three years in the country, and currently only 500 stores buy films.
The businessmen demanded that concrete measures be taken to stop the advance of piracy, but clarified that they did not have positive responses from any level of the National Government, and even from the National Institute of Cinema and Audiovisual Arts (INCAA), they never gave it the necessary attention to afontar this conjuncture. "Liliana Mazure came to tell me once," Parise complains, "that video was already being an obsolete format. Obsolete? So what does Netflix do in the US? Netflix is a system of delivery of audiovisual material, through traditional formats, which grows day by day. And with imagination: individual screenings, differentiation of prices and services".
"If our call for help is not heard, in a short time the control of DVD movie sales will be under the orbit of mafia companies. We need the responsibility of the State to be able to put all this in place properly," Rolando Shama, secretary of the UAV, told the meeting.
Source: Ambito
Authors: Computer Security News
