Industry committee  Thanks. The industry employs almost 16,000 people in a variety of highly skilled and high-paying jobs at nearly 350 companies across the country. Entry-level workers in the industry earn almost twice as much as the average recent college graduate. The average salary across all Ca

Industry committee  On the latter one that we were discussing, I would actually agree in terms of them both. I think there's a role for both. I think the issue and process involved in applying for direct funding can be complex, but the issue and process involved in applying for a tax credit, partic

Industry committee  I wouldn't be in a position to comment on the specific initiatives at this moment. There are plenty of opportunities to streamline operations to make them more efficient, both from a sense of administrating from the government standpoint and also from the perspective of the compa

Industry committee  The principal challenge we're finding with respect to the piracy and counterfeiting issues, which is in copyright and trademark, is that in terms of the trademark issues, there are still a lot of gaps that need to be filled. The Copyright Modernization Act went a long way toward

Industry committee  Indeed.

Industry committee  It's probably all of the above. It's understandable that in terms of the realm and spectrum of issues law enforcement has to respond to, IP crime isn't necessarily number one. The issue is making sure they take it seriously, or more seriously than they have historically. Law enfo

Industry committee  On that issue, the video game industry customarily makes use of patents, particularly outside of the hardware. I'm sure Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony have patents on their consoles, as they do on all their consumer electronics. There's nothing unusual about that. It doesn't get i

Industry committee  Quantitatively, it's difficult to assess. The actual scale and scope is always difficult to assess because the activity tends to be underground. As the market is migrating, the notion of piracy itself is also evolving. You're right that there has been a migration to these digita

Industry committee  We engage in extensive training with law enforcement, actually, to permit them to recognize the counterfeit version versus a legitimate version. In the case of our product specifically, for the reasons I just alluded to, we're finding that the volume of games on physical media an

Industry committee  No, unfortunately not. It's partly that the nature of the piracy has just evolved. It went from a hard goods piracy, where people would buy on discs, to where people download games now. Year over year we see the number of infringements that we detect online increasing as it becom

Industry committee  I agree. You're right that the games industry tends to operate in what you might called closed environments, assuming it's a console. Whether or not it's a closed environment versus a more open environment—and there's a lot of what the word ”open” might happen to mean as an impac

Industry committee  It's a good question. I don't have an answer, mostly because games, specifically console games, actually remain at a fairly consistent price.

Industry committee  Okay. We'll change that eventually.

Industry committee  It's all of the above in terms of where they are. The core groups that stand to gain from widespread piracy of video games, and also of music, movies, and so forth—we're all in the same boat here—and some regular software as well, tend to be, in our case, those who offer, often f

Industry committee  Yes, absolutely. Actually, it's a fancy way of saying it, but when I say giving customs officers the ex officio power to seize, that's exactly what I mean. Right now customs officials do not have the power to seize on their own power things they identify or suspect to be counte