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Piracy crackdown nets results across Asia-Pacific region

Under mounting pressure from the US and other Western countries, the crackdown against copyright piracy has resulted in an unprecedented numbers of prosecutions, fines and jail terms.

In China, the government has deployed 300,000 people to protect Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and says 13,000 people were arrested between 2000 and last year, on suspicion of violations.

Fakes and fines

The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court recently ordered Chaowai Men's Department Store, an indoor market, to pay Louis Vuitton US$18,700 in damages for selling fake handbags.

Fines have been meted out to vendors in the city's famous Silk Alley mall, a tourist magnet for brand name goods which has been under surveillance to clean up its act after moving from a central lane notorious for counterfeit goods.

Su Chun-hung, deputy chief of the Intellectual Property Rights Police Team in Taiwan, said his force had cracked 4,783 piracy cases and arrested 5,469 people last year, up significantly on the previous year.

And in Hong Kong, it took customs officers 10,000 raids a year on shops where hawkers sold pirated DVDs before the problem was brought under control and prosecutions have since spread to illegal use of the Internet.

In India, Pravin Anand, managing partner at Anand and Anand Advocates, said that few people were aware of recent payouts made to major international companies for copyright damages.

These included US$53,000 to Cartier, US$35,000 to Time magazine and US$280,000 to Microsoft.

Japan wants more

However, countries which are major exporters of branded names like Japan remain unimpressed and the dragnets have also had some questionable results -- like the Hong Kong man who wound up before the courts on file sharing charges but said he did not know how to turn a computer on.

Keiichi Nishimoto, deputy director at the Japan External Trade Organization, said Japanese products being copied include entertainment, luxury brands and also industrial products such as electric appliances, auto parts and food.

"Those copied products may be defective and may cause danger," he said.

"Although Japan has been making an effort, we believe that the situation has not improved and think further work is needed," he said.

Yeung Chun-choi, 54, a single parent who supports four children on US$1,000 a month in Hong Kong made headlines recently when served with a writ by seven record companies alleging he uploaded music onto the Internet.

Yeung, who was given a second-hand computer by social workers, said his daughters spent much of their time on the machine.

"I hope they [the court] will understand that I don't know what my children do when they are on the computer," he said.
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