Speeches and Articles by Former Consul General James B. Cunningham

Remarks by U.S. Consul General James B. Cunningham
ImaginAsian Press Roundtable

Multipurpose Room, U.S. Consulate General - Hong Kong
November 21, 2005

(As prepared for delivery)

U.S. Consul General James B. Cunningham addresses the ImaginAsian II press conference with (from left to right) U.S. Senior Commercial Officer Stewart Ballard and the Hong Kong Trade Development Council's Angela Ho.

I would like to first thank everyone for coming today. I especially want to thank Angela Ho from the Hong Kong Trade Development Council and members of the Imaginasian Trade II delegation for joining us.

Despite our long-standing commercial ties, cooperation between Hong Kong and U.S. film industries is a relatively new development. As a direct result of the two Foreign Commercial Service-sponsored ImaginAsian Trade Missions, we are starting to see greater collaboration between Hong Kong and American media firms. For example, a small minority-owned company in Oakland, CA is helping Hong Kong firms develop better scripts and streamlining the movie proposal process. We look forward to greater cooperation in the future. Today, several of the delegation members will share with you some of their exciting plans for the future.

I also want to emphasize today that none of this collaboration is possible without an effective system to defend intellectual property rights. An effective IPR regime protects the creative talents of people as high-value assets, and is essential to today's economy. Hong Kong has made great strides in recent years in combatting counterfeiting, optical disc piracy, and cross border shipments of counterfeit goods. Hong Kong now serves as a model for the region in how IPR protection -- through new legislation, effective law enforcement, and increased public awareness -- makes good business and economic sense. As we saw from California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's public service announcement with Jackie Chan against counterfeiting, the U.S. and Hong Kong are working together on this issue.

However, there is still some room for improvement. One key area is end-user piracy, which Hong Kong is addressing through its proposed amendments to the the Copyright Ordinance Unauthorized sharing of movies, music, games, and books on the Internet is another problem. The Internet facilitates peer-to-peer file sharing, making pirated movies available to a vast audience. We applaud the Hong Kong Government for convicting and sentencing the first BitTorrent related P2P piracy case in the world. While we believe this was an important first step, Hong Kong must stiffen the penalties for unauthorized sharing of copyrighted material over the Internet and set down legal guidelines for Internet Service Providers to cooperate with law enforcement officials.

I again want to thank our panel participants. Thank you all for coming and I look forward to watching the growing collaboration between America's and Hong Kong's dynamic film industries. Unfortunately, I have another commitment and cannot stay for the entire program. I would now like to invite our Senior Commercial Officer, Stewart Ballard, to say a few words about the ImaginAisan Trade Missions.

Photo: From left to right: Toby Marion, AmCham Communications & Marketing Subcommittee; Angela Ho, HK Trade Development Council; Douglas Hui, Sun Wah Media; Stewart Ballard, U.S. Senior Commercial Officer; Fred Wong, Salon Films; Raymond Wong, Mandarin Films; Perry Yung, International Film; Raymond Ho, Directors Network Asia; Victor Wong, Menfond Electronic Art; Rigo Jesu, Intercontinental Films