Friday, May 20, 2005

Really?

Just came across this news item in a news agency: "KARACHI, May 20 (APP): International film, music and software producers on Friday commended the Pakistan government for taking urgently-needed actions to curb the mass-scale violation of copyright. "Pakistan is showing that it takes seriously the need to address its severe levels of copyright piracy," said a joint press statement issued here by the senior representatives of International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI), Business Software Alliance (BSA) and Motion Picture Association (MPA). "We applaud the Pakistan government efforts for strongly protecting the intellectual property of the musicians, film makers and software developers and believe these will benefit the country," the three international groups unanimously said. The response follows administrative reforms and strict enforcement actions announced by the government in recent weeks. Pakistan Intellectual Property Rights Organization (PIPRO) has been created to oversee copyright, trademark and patent protection issues, while the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) arrested nine persons and confiscated more than 400,000 pirated CDs, DVDs and audio cassettes, besides 10,000 Master Discs (stampers) and closing down six illegal optical disc plants around Karachi."
How come I'm still able to buy the pirated goodies from the shops right across the streets in Karachi even now?

5 comments:

rotatef said...

How come I'm still able to buy the pirated goodies from the shops right across the streets in Karachi even now?

Here in Lahore, my usual DVD place hadn't had a shipment of new stuff for two weeks when I visited them last week. They get most of their stuff from Karachi.

The crackdown isn't all that surprising when you consider that close to 90% of all pirated movie copies made in Pakistan end up being exported. When a co-worker visited Malaysia a few months ago, all the Customs people were interested in was whether he had any pirated DVDs.

I don't think piracy when it comes to DVDs has been all that great. True, I can buy a DVD for under $2...but that also means that almost no one rents out DVDs any more, so I'm stuck with a lot of DVDs I've watched once and will never watch again.

Anonymous said...

The problem is not the legal framework but the enforcement of it. These bodies are ultimately answerable at year's end to report their progress. PIPRO needs to report what it has accomplished and justify it's existence, hence the raids happen.

This issue goes deeper. An intersting discussion took place on this elsewhere.

Saqib Saud said...

no need to buy CD anymore.
why should we pay more and buy original cd .
why cant we just get good internet speed connection and download every thing that we want from net.
in 6kb/sec connection you can download a movie in 24hrs easily.

Anonymous said...

:( no more pirated dvds and cds. well thank God for Blockbuster and dvd burners. :D

rotatef said...

Let's see...wait 24 hours, or drive down to the DVD place (10 minutes there, 10 back). Hmm.