Seems like everyone’s got a beef with China these days. The hippies are protesting the Olympics, concerned parents are boycotting the lead-laden toys, and the movie industry is constantly warning the world’s fastest-growing country that it needs to shape up and fly right with this whole movie piracy thing. Not that it’s helped—the bulk of the world’s pirated DVDs come from China.
Now the Motion Picture Association is enlisting the biggest star of last weekend’s box office in yet another attempt to stop the flow of pirated DVDs. Jackie Chan will be appearing in a giant anti-piracy billboard, according to Variety, located in Beijing’s Silk Market, once one of the hotbeds of piracy in the country. The billboard features Chan and the slogan, in English and Chinese, “Protect the movies, say NO to piracy.” It also seems to feature some statistics in Chinese, which Variety doesn’t describe in detail.
Chan is obviously a beloved cultural figure both here and in China, and he’s surely a coup of a celebrity figure for the MPAA to score. But is this billboard actually going to talk someone bent on piracy into spending a hard-won $20 on a DVD instead? Would it convince you? Good for Chan for joining the side of the good guys, but it’s hard to see how this is anything but another drop in the bucket in the unending struggle between Hollywood and the pirates who plague it.
