Last year, Viacom, whose Paramount subsidiary is an MPAA member, told the Wall Street Journal that “a new wave of digital piracy could threaten the US media business” if it lost its copyright infringement case against YouTube. Similarly, the MPAA has argued that “when profits are reduced, the studios have fewer dollars to invest in movies, and when there is less money to invest they make fewer movies and the diversity and variety of films we love become more limited.”
So we were interested in this CNN story on the 20 biggest CEO pay raises. The winner? Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman. He got a raise of $50.5 million in 2010. That represents an impressive 149 percent pay increase from his 2009 compensation of $34 million.
Indeed, Hollywood has had a long streak of record-breaking box office results. And Dauman isn’t the only CEO reaping the benefits. Disney CEO Robert Iger made $29.6 million in 2010. Not as much as Dauman, but a tidy sum nevertheless. In addition, the entire US copyright industry is in rude health. Indeed, it has significantly outperformed the US economy through a nasty recession.
» via ars technica