BEIJING -- In one of the most popular pirate DVD shops in Beijing, there is more shelf space where the fake copies of recent Hollywood blockbusters used to reside. Could this be a sign the studios are winning their battle against Asia's pirates? Not likely -- things are getting more sophisticated, that's all.
"The appearance of the retail piracy market has changed recently, with one of the main reasons being the April 2007 Judicial Interpretation, which lowered the threshold for criminal prosecution from 1,000 discs to 500 discs," says Mike Ellis, senior vice prexy and regional director for the Motion Picture Assn. in the Asia-Pacific region.
This means retailers hold fewer discs on the premises, but now customers choose discs from catalogs while the seller brings their picks into the shop from an off-site storeroom. The pirates are incredibly flexible in how they work.
The Year of the Rat began in February, and for the studios this year of the wily rodent will be all about matching the cunning and speed of the pirates with legislative changes plus more prosecutions and arrests.
The MPA estimates its members lost $6.1 billion to worldwide piracy in 2005, the last year for which complete figures are available, about $1.2 billion of that from piracy across the Asia-Pacific region, slightly less than in the U.S.
Technological changes pose a major threat, particularly the transition to digital.
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