The MPAA announced yesterday the signing of the Beijing Treaty at the WIPO, which is a landmark step towards protecting performance rights internationally. 122 countries signed the treaty after 6 days of negotiations.

Digital copyright protection is in the best interests of the global film industry, and accords such as this will strengthen the international co-operation between nations on the issue.

There is a lot of work to be done to ensure that digital entertainment is protected and as we can see, the web is proving to be an enormous challenge for the whole industry. Because the web effectively has no borders or controls in most nations, digital rights protection is very hard to enforce. There are many local laws, values, and political implications for implementing digital protection and getting agreement from all parties takes time.

ISPs will play a major part in bringing about a change in the way people can access digital entertainment, but getting them to prevent users to download illegal files has faced strong opposition in the past.

International agreements and enforcement to protect digital content are ultimately the only way forward for the film industry.