Studios, MPAA to Begin Promoting UltraViolet More ‘Very Soon’

SAN FRANCISCO -- Movie studios and the MPAA will begin promoting UltraViolet more soon, Chris Dodd, MPAA chairman, and Mitch Singer, Sony Pictures Entertainment’s chief technology officer and president of the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, told reporters Tuesday after an event at the Commonwealth Club. “It’s been under a year since we launched and we have over 5 million registered users already,” Singer said. “There’s been very little promotion and advertising by the studios and that’s going to happen very soon,” he said.

MPAA will also be involved in promoting UltraViolet, Dodd said. The group will put information about the technology on its new website TheCredits.org, he said. “This is one of the things we're really going to be promoting on that website,” he said. UltraViolet is brand name for cross-industry service that lets customers store online a digital copy of certain hard-copy home entertainment products they buy, and then access that copy on multiple devices.

In Washington, MPAA needs to do a better job talking about its business to lawmakers, Dodd said during an hour-long discussion with Gavin Newsom, California’s lieutenant governor. Dodd is still barred from talking to members of Congress by Senate ethics rules. But historically the movie industry has not talked enough about the role it plays in the national economy and in regional economies, he said. As a senator on fundraising trips to Hollywood, “I can’t recall any time anyone pulled me aside saying ‘let me talk to you about the business,'” Dodd said. “You go to Detroit or you come up here, and people want to know where you are on the issues."

Discussing the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), Dodd said the bills are both dead and not coming back. “And they shouldn’t,” he said. “We need a whole new approach to this.” Dodd said he hopes the entertainment and technology communities can work more closely together to reach solutions that benefit both industries, he said. “What if one side wins or the other, is that really a victory for anybody? I don’t think it is.”

Still, the advocacy around those bills and the flood of emails members of Congress received from the bill’s critics was “a transformative event,” in Washington, Dodd said. “It just blew the doors off and I think it changed forever how people are going to address their elected representatives,” he said.