BANGKOK: A large crowd gathers at a shopping mall in Bangkok as police swoop on a stallholder peddling pirated DVDs and computer software.
Scores of counterfeit discs are bundled into boxes and taken away. The stallholder’s desperate pleas fall on deaf ears.
Word quickly gets around to the other traders. Bags of discs are stashed under tables and accomplices dash for the doors with sacks of DVDs. The stalls are cleared in a matter of seconds.
This is a daily event at Pantip Plaza, Asia’s premier hotspot for pirated DVDs and software and the face of an illicit industry playing cat and mouse with the authorities and robbing Thailand’s economy of millions of dollars every year.
Under fire from record labels and software empires across the world, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has declared war on intellectual piracy in Thailand, but as the crackdown enters its third month, it’s hard to tell who’s winning.
“I’m not worried,” says Prachai, a stallholder at Pantip Plaza, peering towards the entrance of the five-storey shopping centre.
“I have two guys outside on the lookout for police and by the time they get here all the stock has been moved away. We’re used to working like this. We just have to be careful and make sure we don’t get caught.”
But owners of intellectual property like computer software, music, and DVDs say the problem goes far beyond the small-time traders peddling copied discs from tables on Bangkok’s streets.
“It’s no longer a mom and pop shop system of piracy anymore,” Mark Ellis of the US-based Motion Picture Association (MPA) said in an interview.
“Thailand dealt very well with video piracy in the 1990s but what we’re seeing now is far more sophisticated.
ORGANIZED CRIME: “Now we’re talking about organized crime groups involved at the very top end. They’re very smart people with accountants and lawyers helping them funnel money inside and outside Thailand. Money laundering is part and parcel of what they do.”
MPA has voiced its concern about the number of factories producing DVDs in Thailand. They say the figure has risen from 20 in 1999 to 51 at the end of last year, although the kingdom only has domestic demand to satisfy two or three factories.
“So what’s happening to the rest of the DVDs? We’ve an escalating problem in Thailand and we’re very worried,” Ellis added.
But when piracy is so lucrative to the consumer, public support for combating illicit traders could prove difficult to harness. The average Thai earns one-sixteenth the income of an average American and Prachai says original DVDs, CDs and software are far beyond his means.
He believes he is providing a service to Thai consumers. He sells copied music CDs for 100 baht ($2.40) when originals are 500 baht and illegal DVD movies are a 10th of the price of a genuine DVD. A Microsoft Windows programme fetches 9,000 baht at a shop around the corner, but Prachai’s bootleg version costs just 130 baht.
“Thai people can’t afford to buy originals,” he says. “They have no choice. They can buy a pirated copy or nothing. That’s why so many people come here.”
But it’s not just the wealthy multinational companies who suffer. MPA, Microsoft and the European Commission are among a number of organizations that have warned Thailand of the economic consequences it faces when harbouring pirates.
“It’s a loss to the whole Thai economy,” Ellis said. “It’s hurting our industry but it’s hurting the local industry as well. Shops and movie rental shops are going out of business, cinemas are cutting their staff and they aren’t foreigners, they’re local people.—Reuters
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