Try billions. As in $20 billion annually.

The $20 billion figure was the big number bandied about during a Congressional field hearing in Los Angeles on April 6 as entertainment execs looked to the federal government for some kind of relief from entertainment piracy.

You want some examples? Universal Music Group President and Chief Operating Officer Zach Horowitz estimated that only one in three CDs and one in 20 downloads are sold legally throughout the world, reports the New York Times.

A more specific example came from Walt Disney Studios Chairman Richard Cook, who traced the path of a pirated copy of last summer’s “Wall-E” flick, showing how a person secretly recording the movie from a movie theatre screen in Kiev resulted in pirated copies sold in several countries.

Speaking of countries, the entertainment industry execs described Russia, China and India as problem states where piracy flourishes, but also focused their attention on one country that’s hardly mentioned when discussing massive copyright infringement on an international scale – Canada.

That’s right. According to legislatures and entertainment executives, Canadian policy allows for large amounts of illicit videos and music recordings to leave that country and enter the United States.

Keep in mind that when entertainment execs gather to talk about copyright piracy, just about anything cutting into the bottom line is apt to be tagged as illegal.

For instance, there was much negative talk about Chinese search engine Baidu, which has been in hot water because it allows users to find pirated material, although the search portal doesn’t actually host any content.

Similar in tone to the RIAA arguments during the late 1990s against U.S.-based search engines giving users the capability to search for MP3 files – legal and not – members of Congress and entertainment officials discussed what to do about Baidu, with Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-California) declaring, “It’s time to put the hammer down.”

While members of the entertainment industry had plenty to say about piracy, few had solutions. Testifying on behalf of the Directors Guild of America, the organization’s vice president, director Steven Soderbergh, said that the U.S. should borrow a page from copyright enforcement in France and “deputize” entertainment companies.

When pressed for more information on what the French are doing to control piracy and how deputizing entertainment companies might work, Soderbergh was vague on details.

Many entertainment industry execs have looked upon that country’s “three strikes” method, where ISPs issue multiple warnings followed, if necessary, by Internet disconnection, as one possible solution to rampant piracy.

Asked if such an approach might work in the U.S., Soderbergh said passing laws to enact a program similar to France’s three strikes policy would be “tricky.”

Click here to read the New York Times article.