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The Hong Kong Motion Pictures Industry Association (MPIA) is urging the world’s largest video-sharing website, YouTube, to enforce international copyright infringement measures after finding footage from some of its blockbuster box-office hits like Love in the Buff and some 200 other films available for free online. This week, the HK association blamed YouTube for estimated losses of $308 million, adding that YouTube was slow to remove the illegally uploaded version of Love in the Buff, even after Media Asia, the film’s producers, filed a formal complaint. HK filmmakers say a recent search found some of their most popular hits available on the Google-owned YouTube servers, including Hong Kong Film Awards winners: A Simple Life, The Flying Swords of Dragon Gate, Echoes of the Rainbow, and Shaolin Soccer. Blockbuster Ip Man and its sequel were split into 107 video files, while the pirated YouTube videos of clubbing drama Lan Kwai Fong and Jet Li’s Fearless received 1.8 million and 1.4 million hits, respectively. A classic fight scene from Bruce Lee’s Way of the Dragon was viewed 4.8 million times. (The Hollywood Reporter – HK Piracy)
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