Its about time...the US rattled the copyright cage with China today. See it here. I'm glad they did. Authors have rights - and in a global economy, you need to play fair with those rights. Change will be hard to accomplish, but with a $250M trade surplus with the US, and the olympics coming up - seems to me like China would want to act a bit more grown up. It still however points out that there is probably an alternative model out there somewhere for the movie industry. I don't know what it is, but it is based on the idea that movies have a limited shelf life, after which their value goes to free (or in software terms - open source) pretty quickly. So you need to structure the business to get your return quickly, and then monetize what you can in the longer term. Raise first run ticket prices, with more capacity. Do more animated special effects (assuming that they are cheaper than physical effects). Put a lot of related stuff on the web, and charge for it (outtakes, tee shirts...). Get stars on the road and charge for their time - maybe even have them act in plays. Sell more placements (makes movies more like commercials). Build and price dvd's to be competitive with bad quality knockoffs. The music industry at least has concerts...the movie industry is in a tough spot. But if they depend only on government intervention, they are fighting an uphill battle.