M+E Daily

Piracy of films prior to their home video release may never be completely eradicated, says Paul Chesney, vice president of international operations for Universal Pictures International Entertainment. But if studios and their vendors could reduce the value of Europe’s pirate video market by just five percent, he notes, “we would have a growth business.”

Speaking at the Entertainment Content Protection Summit in London on Thursday, Chesney said that content security represents “the biggest opportunity” for the packaged home entertainment business, which continues to see declines in retail sales amidst the growth of digital markets (legitimate and otherwise).

Part of the industry’s anti-piracy fight, Chesney said, must come in “changing our business models.” He agreed with sentiments voiced by other major studio executives during Wednesday’s ESCA Europe conference (co-located with the Content Protection Summit in London) that stakeholders in the home entertainment business should work together on consolidating the industry’s supply chain.

“Historically, I think it’s fair to say you could see there was an edge for different studios to have different supply partners,” Chesney said. “But really the supply chain is not the competitive piece (of the business) anymore.”

Chesney envisions studios shifting their globally distribution approaches: from maintaining a roster of suppliers that are local to individual territories, to working with “suppliers that have a multi-territory reach.” The new approach, Chesney said, would enable studios to better “target [their] anti-piracy and security efforts,” with a shorter list of partners serving as a security enhancement in itself.

Chesney also praised the facility accreditation efforts of the Content Delivery & Storage Association (CDSA). Universal has encouraged its suppliers to participate in the accreditation program, which is designed to complement the industry’s existing anti-piracy efforts.

Programs such as studio spot audits of facilities, Chesney said, “are great [in telling] you what could be wrong and what could be improved. But the joy of the CDSA program is that it’s day-to-day: it’s ongoing, it’s a process that suppliers have to adopt,” he said. “Every member of (a supplier’s) staff has to question and think about what they’re doing every time they handle content. So it’s not a spot survey; it’s part of the DNA of the business.”

With approximately 35 of Universal’s vendors having signed up for CDSA accreditation over the past year—primarily among them, authoring and compression houses, as well as disc replication facilities—the studio now plans to ask distributors and licensees in more territories to adopt the standards.