J’ca pirates burnin’ sales

Music piracy, from anecdotal evidence, pulls in tens of thousands weekly for street sellers, from both cassettes and compact disk recordings, easily undercutting sales in music stores at less than a quarter of the price.

"It’s hard to say, but we’ve estimated an overall drop of about 20 to 25 per -cent on our total sales," said Paul Shoucair, manager of Mobile Music, which sells CDs and DVDs in the Liguanea area of Kingston.

"Dancehall, in particular, has been affected tremendously — by about a 30 to 35 percent decline. Apart from the burning of CDs, illegal downloading affects us too," said Shoucair.

Disks of the hottest music and artistes that normally retail for Ja$950 to Ja$1,500 on average are sold openly on the streets for Ja$300 to Ja$400. It’s even cheaper on school campuses, at Ja$150 to Ja$200, sometimes less if the transaction is between close friends, according to Sunday Observer checks.

Blank disks retail for Ja$40 to Ja$60.

But copyright enforcers know little of the profile of the true offenders — except that the broad group involves students, street vendors and even established businesses; the authorities also lack data on the money flows from sales. "It is hard to pinpoint any one group to be blamed for the increase," said Lonnette Fisher, copyright manager at the Jamaica Intellectual Property Office (JIPO).

"The increase in the commercial activity is the result of greater access to technology where more persons have computers with internet service at home," she said.

Camille Royes, attorney-at-law and entertainment specialist, says the illicit business is thriving because the sanctions are insufficient to deter bootleggers.

"There are no stringent punitive measures in place to prevent persons from abusing the system," said Royes.

"Until we start seeing persons being punished, piracy and copyright infringement will continue to plague the entertainment industry." The police, however, had a slightly different take, blaming lenient judges who apply small penalties to pirates caught in the act; and a buying public that is ambivalent to the law.

Under the Copyright Act, offenders are to be fined up to Ja$100,000 per count for pirated material.

"In the majority of the cases, the judges only give out fines between Ja$5,000 and Ja$15,000, and so the persons go back out on the street and continue selling," said Detective Winston Lindo of the Anti-Piracy Unit of the Organised Crime Investigation Division. "Those fines being imposed do not help to stop the problem."

JIPO, though it made no comment on the courts’ handling of such cases, said the general trend is "an average fine of Ja$20,000 or imprisonment of three months".

Seized items are generally destroyed, but a public burning at the Riverton city dump in June 2004 of pirated material confiscated by the courts has done little to stem the illicit trading of movies and music.

"Despite successes in prosecuting these matters ... piracy, counterfeiting and bootlegging continue on a wide scale," said JIPO in written comment on the status of copyright enforcement.

Lindo said, too, that despite his unit’s involvement in efforts to warn the public through television and radio advertisements the transactions continue to grow.

Piracy, worldwide is extremely big business. The loss to American industries in 2004, for example, was estimated at US$13.4 billion, and a report cited countries such as China and Russia as big offenders.

Worldwide, the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) said piracy represented US$25 billion to US$30 billion in global losses from illegal copies of films, software, video games and other copyright industries.

The agency said then that some 67 countries were failing to rigorously enforce copyright laws, and urged the US to place 42 of them under review.

Jamaica remains on the American Watch List 301, which tracks intellectual property violations. But the Americans’ concern in 2004 centred more on the cable industry rather than music.

Sellers say that they were well aware of the copyright laws. But for them, it is an economic issue — a source of income in an economy very short on jobs, especially for the unskilled.

"Well, police catch me before and I had to pay almost $200,000 in court," said a man who called himself Andrew, a seller of burnt CDs.

A female vendor said that she sells burnt DVDs with her boyfriend.

"Why people must waste them money go theatre, when them can get the movie fi buy cheap," she said. A movie ticket is about Ja$400; DVDs in the stores sell for up to Ja$2,000, but the pirated copies can be had for several hundred dollars.