NEW YORK, NY May 05, 2008 —A long-stalled bill in Albany to fight piracy of TV shows and movies got a boost today.

Jeff Zucker, the president and CEO of NBC/Universal, urged state lawmakers to increase the penalty for first-time piracy offenders to a misdemeanor, up from a simple violation.

Zucker said failure to act could endanger one of America's most successful exports to the rest of the world: entertainment.

ZUCKER: There's a lot of talk these days about the state of the economy, the one sector of the economy that's not facing a slowdown, I think, is this one, and for pirates business is in fact booming.

REPORTER: He was at a press event with state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo who estimated that as much as 50 percent of the nation's pirated DVDs originate in the state of New York.