MPAA, VFX outsourcing, and Tariffs/subsidies

[Eastoff]

http://pando.com/2014/02/25/revenge...-weapon-in-their-fight-against-big-hollywood/

The MPAA has been outsourcing their visual special effects to cheaper labor. Not surprisingly many American studios have been cutting jobs or shutting down because of the cheap and subsidized foreign labor. Here are some vital quotes from the article.

, the MPAA argued that digital goods should be considered imports and therefore subject to the stringent copyright protections the big studios so desperately want.

From the filing (emphasis mine):

To effectuate Congressional intent to protect domestic industries, the Commission can and must construe the term “articles” to include imported electronic transmissions, consistent with its own precedent and decisions from other administrative agencies and courts.

…The need to regulate the burgeoning international trade in digital intellectual property is widely recognized by U.S. policymakers. The U.S. government has consistently recognized that international trade in digital forms of intellectual property is every bit as “real” as trade in traditional manufactured goods.

The use of electronic means to import into the United States infringing articles threatens important domestic industries such as the motion picture and software industries, as well as U.S. consumers and the government at all levels.

In a statement to Pando, the MPAA proudly reiterated this position.

and further down:

Underscoring that, Google has weighed in on the same obscure 3-D printing case, perhaps in an effort to legitimize its own current or future offshoring practices. In its filing obtained by Pando, the company insists that because “there is not a single mention of electronic transmissions” in the underlying trade law from 1922, it “appl(ies) to physical goods and not electronic transmissions.”

Beyond the sheer insanity of implying that lawmakers 90 years ago deliberately excluded Internet communication from trade statutes, Google’s argument was debunked by the visual effects workers’ lawyers, who outlined how government agencies like the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency and the Court of International Trade (which oversees the ITC) routinely treat digital products as regular imports.

As important, Google’s case was also legally eviscerated by — you guessed it! — the MPAA. In its review of legislative history, the MPAA ended up debunking the idea that digital goods are not imports. In the process, the MPAA further made the visual effects industry’s prospective case against the legality of the big studios’ own lucrative subsidies.

I am a big proponent of tariffs in these globalizing times. What say you?