Bangkok's Software Piracy Battle

[george]

Bangkok's software piracy battle

BBC ClickOnline's Richard Taylor investigates how Thailand is faring in its fight to stop the counterfeiting of music, films and software.

BANGKOK: For years Bangkok has being known as the piracy capital of the world. There is even a museum of counterfeit goods to show off some of the booty seized in law enforcement raids.

Among the fake football shirts, designer sunglasses and mobile phones are the ubiquitous CDs. It is damaging the technology industry in Thailand and is something the Thai Government is keener than ever to address.

The public relations offensive is in full swing. A video has been produced that is designed to show the cost of piracy to the nation and to trumpet the government's successes in dealing with it.

It says raids on optical disc production plants are crushing the problem at its source whilst vigorous enforcements on retail outlets is stymieing distribution.

Slick operation

ClickOnline decided to put these claims to the test. Wearing a secret camera I went to one of Bangkok's piracy hotspots.

We were in good company, there were dozens of other potential customers.

Within minutes I was being approached by eager suppliers of music, films, software and games. I was handed booklets of titles to choose from, some of which have only just arrived at the cinema.

You only get to see the covers so there is no hard evidence of illicit activity should the police arrive.

Once I had decided which titles to buy and negotiated in a bit of friendly haggling, the young sales assistant ran off to a nearby van or warehouse to collect the actual disc.

I was not allowed to accompany her.

A few minutes later she returned and delivered the goods. All this seemed very open and good-natured, a far cry from the criminal underworld and the syndicates which run these operations.

But law enforcement specialists say every last detail is planned and there is a lot more going on than meets the eye.

"Generally speaking you'll have a person who is acting as the salesperson who may be 19 or 20 years old," explained Ed Kelly, head of anti-piracy enforcement at the law firm Tilleke and Gibbins International.

"The reason for this is that these are organised criminal syndicates, they know what the law is and they will hire young people because they know that young people cannot be prosecuted to the full extent of the law."

Police lookouts

Mr Kelly said the syndicates also employ people as spotters, whose job is to look out for police coming to either inspect or raid a particular shop or stall.

These spotters even have photographs of people known to be involved in the copyright industry.

"We had a situation where we had raided a particular shopping centre so often that the spotters had come to know our personnel by facial recognition," said Mr Kelly.

"They could see the person coming and as soon as the person set foot inside the shopping centre, they would physically close the shop and lock it so that we could not enter and conduct a raid."

Potential customers see just one side: extraordinarily cheap products. Music, movies and games may be most popular, but it is the software industry which is particularly vulnerable.

Lost revenue

Programs that would normally cost hundreds, even thousands of dollars, are being ripped off and sold for next to nothing.

All this, of course, is taking place at street level. The more insidious side of piracy here, as elsewhere, is happening up above, in businesses big and small.

"We don't expect to be able to immediately reduce piracy tomorrow," admitted Jonathan Selvasegaram of the Business Software Alliance which campaigns against piracy.

"It is an effort that has to be addressed on a long-term basis. If you talk about piracy, you're really talking about respecting intellectual property rights, and to educate people and companies about these rights."

After our little expedition, ClickOnline came away with hundreds of dollars of software.

About 75% of all Bangkok's business software used is illegal, costing software makers more than $80 million a year in lost revenue.

--BBC Click Online

[tomy]

software piracy will never dies

[tuky]

I Absentmindedly wandered into a pirate cd shop one day just before it was raided. Quite an amusing experience and somewhat frightening.

Obviously there was a lookout who warned the shopkeeper, because the shop phone rang and next thing the roller doors were slammed down and locked, the guy was telling us tell shut up and everything will be allright as he sat peeping through the keyhole.

1/2 hour later I walked out and looked back, realised that the shop had no signs, no name.

anyone else have a similar experience?

[huski]

the police can not stop piracy or slow it down, they have only made it more organized

confiscating large cd duplicating machines does not work

registering every new large cd duplicating machine does not work

raiding the stores does not work

lowering the price of real cds does not work

the only thing that has changed in the last two years is:

stores stopped displaying rows of copied CD covers on the walls of the stores

most don't have books of CD covers out front, some are in drawers or locked file cabinets

there are more lookouts with cellphones outside

in fact, there are even more touts hounding you to buy copies of DVDs, VCDs, CDs, MP3s in certain areas. so if you are looking for copies, its even easier than before.

[Guest ka1234]

No one is interested in stopping it. They are forced to pretend to be tough against piracy to avoid embargos from the US, EU etc.

There is way too much money trickling into the pockets of police generals and politicians for them to shut down this trade.

One amusing thing: I went to Pantip Plaza about 1.5-2 years ago. The police along with the movie distributors (CVD etc) had a huge press conference outside where they proudly proclaimed that they had shut down all sales of pirated CDs and DVDs in Pantip. There was a large crowd of reporters, news cameras etc covering the event. So I went in, up to the second floor, bought a few pirate pirate CDs and then went to get some hardware. When I came out from Pantip, the press conference was still going on. I was _very_ tempted to hold up the CDs in the air and shout "see what I just bought", but pulling down the pants on the police (esp since there were some high ranking officers there) in front of TV cameras would most likely have ensured a quick and violent death. I didn't want to get run over by a Tuk Tuk so I left quietly. The next day, BKK post etc had headlines that Pantip Plaza was now "legal". BS. They didn't even bother to stop the trade during the press conference.

Anyway, the point is: the piracy stimulates the Thai economy (hardly any companies pay for any imported software), it brings in more F/X. The cost of producing a pirate CD is very low so most of the sales is pure profit unlike other export goods where the material and work cost more.

The police generals and politicians get a decent share of the money to leave this business alone. So why would they stop it?