Cable will be operating in 120 million homes by 2000. Moreover, we at the MPA are eager to combine with our compatriots in Asia to combat piracy, the wanton theft of intellectual property belonging to Asian creators as well as Americans. Piracy is a deadly cancer squirming inside the belly of the movie business. This thievery affects local industries just as much if not more than the U.S. creative product. Pirates are no respecters of nationality or culture.
Pirates are very obliging.
They steal from everyone. That is why deep in the southwest Pacific, from Australia and New Zealand north to the mainland and islands of Asia, to the very heart of the Asian land mass, the American industry is working in intimate partnership with more than a dozen Asian countries to make piracy a high-risk, low reward enterprise. Each day we have to be vigilant because like virtue we are every day besieged. Which is why we can never sleep or hesitate, else Asians and Americans will bear witness to the slow undoing of our audiovisual world. I tell you, and all those who will somehow learn of these words today, we are ready to merge our efforts with others in every part of this world so that we can mingle expertise and resources.