U.S. studios TAP Latin America.

The Motion Picture Association of America and the Maryland-based Television Association of Programmers Latin America have announced a renewed commitment to work together to address the regulatory.' challenges that plague pay-TV programming suppliers in Latin America.

The MPA, which includes all of the major studios, and TAP Latin America, which is comprised of companies like Fox Sports Americas, GEMS International Television, Discovery Channel Latin America and CNN International, are hoping to tackle a gamut of issues that affect their business in the region. These include underreporting of subscribers and piracy problems like satellite signal theft and unauthorized retransmission of programming. Another problem that the groups hope to tackle is the lack of a regulatory framework to guide the expansion of cable operations.

Steve Solot, the MPA's senior vp for Latin American Operations, noted that his organization has worked in the past to establish influence in regulatory and intellectual property rights issues concerning the Latin American film, TV and home video markets.

The MPA and TAP Latin America have embarked on joint endeavors before, in individual countries ranging from Argentina, Colombia and Guatemala to Honduras and the Dominican Republic. In Argentina, the two groups joined with local cable operator associations, programmer associations and government agencies to establish a movie classification and rating system. The two groups have been monitoring the development of cable TV legislation in Colombia, and in Guatemala and Honduras they met with government officials to push for the enforcement of existing anti-piracy legislation. In the Dominican Republic, a joint delegation from the two groups met with government officials, U.S. Embassy officials, local cable operators and local experts to address widespread pay-TV signal theft. The MPA and TAP Latin America also joined with local operators to audit cable systems in search of accurate subscriber counts.