MPAA fires back at Wikipedia’s Wales over online piracy

By Jennifer Martinez - 07/12/12 05:57 PM ET

The Motion Picture Association of America fired back at comments made by Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales on Thursday about the entertainment industry needing to adjust its business model — signaling the battle over online copyright policy is far from over.

Following a keynote speech at the Wikimania conference in Washington, Wales told reporters that the problem of online piracy could be reduced in large part by media companies making TV shows and other entertainment content more accessible for people to purchase. But a spokeswoman for the motion picture trade group pushed back against Wales’s comments, arguing there is a range of options available for people to watch movies and TV shows online and that studios continue to seek to expand that number of offerings.

“Our studios are constantly partnering and innovating new ways for audiences to watch the movies and TV shows they love: Hulu, HBO Go, Vudu, Crackle, UltraViolet, Epix, MUBI – and that just barely scratches the surface,” said Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman at the MPAA. “There are more legitimate avenues available today to watch movies and TV shows online than ever before, and our studios are continuing to innovate every day to bring audiences even more options.”

“At the end of the day, stealing shows and movies out of convenience still harms the people who work hard to make them,” Bedingfield added.

MPAA was a major backer of a pair of anti-piracy bills that were defeated earlier this year, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). The trade association has argued that websites offering illegal copies of movies are harming the film industry’s bottom lines and putting the jobs of people who work behind the camera at risk.

When responding to a question about how online piracy can be addressed, Wales told reporters Thursday that he had trouble accessing the latest season of the HBO series “Game of Thrones” at home in London even though he was willing to pay for it.

“I think that the media industry needs to say, 'Look, why don’t we sell people what they want to buy,’ and I think that will take care a huge proportion of the problem,” he said.

The anti-piracy bills fiercely divided the entertainment and tech industries. Wikipedia joined other sites in blacking out for a day to protest SOPA and PIPA, arguing the measures would encourage censorship on the Web.