For years, the Motion Picture Association of America has been pushing legislation to ratchet up copyright enforcement. In 2008, the association helped push through the PRO-IP Act, which allowed the federal government to seize domain names used for copyright infringement and created a new federal copyright czar. This year, the MPAA is a leading force in the campaign for "rogue sites" legislation, which would give the federal government broad powers to target sites with minimal judicial oversight.

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.

To be fair, Viacom is a publicly traded company, and if Viacom's shareholders believe Dauman deserves a $50 million raise, that's their business. Maybe he deserves a raise. Also, most of the compensation is in the form of stocks and stock options, which fluctuate from year to year, so he won't necessarily get that $50 million in future years.

Still, it makes us wonder about the merits of spending even more taxpayer dollars (and trampling civil liberties) to better protect Viacom copyrights. Making movies seems pretty profitable as it is. And it seems a bit counterintuitive for a company that says its business is threatened by piracy to be so lavish with executive compensation.

Neither the MPAA nor Viacom were willing to comment on this story.