A director with the French news agency Agence France Presse (AFP) said Friday that Internet piracy was a major threat to world's media.

"I think a major challenge for the media is how to deal with the Internet, which provides a lot of opportunities and also a lot of dangers," said Eric McDonald Wishart, AFP's Asia-Pacific director who is here to attend the World Media Summit.

"News has a value... news is expensive... But people take your products, get money from your work and pay nothing on the Internet," he said in an interview with Xinhua.

"It is very difficult to find lawyers and very complex. Piracy with the Internet is a major threat to this world," he said.

The summit, running from Oct. 8-10, gathered about 300 representatives from more than 170 media outlets from around the world, including wire services, newspapers and magazines, radio and television broadcasters, and on-line media.

It was jointly launched by the Xinhua News Agency, News Corporation, AP, Reuters, ITAR-TASS, Kyodo News, BBC, Turner Broadcasting System and Google Inc..