Audio & Video piracy in Sri Lanka

Intellectual Property Rights, Audio & Video Piracy; what does these words mean to you?

May be nothing. But it seems that the heat is on the government and several wakeup calls seem to be alarming the government to do something about it.

About 2 weeks earlier, the American Chamber of Commerce and its Sri Lankan counterpart lobbied in an effort to find a solution to the rapid spreading of this issue of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) violation and the rampant audio & video piracy. There has always been much discussion about these matters, especially in the South and East Asian countries, and to this date, none of the solutions proved to be substantially sufficient.

In Sri Lanka, however, people never notice that there exists something in the name of IPR, at least not the majority of the general public. I’ll limit this post to the video & audio piracy issue since currently it is the most gravest of them all. As most of us are aware, we can by a DVD originally worth $15-20 for less than $3 from Colombo and a Windows or an Oracle software package which would originally cost around $600 for less than $3. To make matters even worse, these are not been sold on the sly. The major selling places are in the heart of Colombo in places like MC or Liberty Plaza. On the other hand, if you are willing to buy a local audio album worth around $5-7 for less than $2, then pettah is a breeding ground for such markets.

Now, I’m not pleading innocence in this matter. As most other people, I too buy most of the CDs and DVDs from these places and of course they are pirated versions. So, there’s a lot of substance in the argument that I’m not worthy of writing anything about IPR. Admitted. But this is what our logical reasoning tells us to do. If you can buy the same product for $3, why would you spend $600? Provided that I’m not a wealthy son of a minister or any other affluent person with a high ego for an expensive collection of whatever the stuff, I would continue with my rational attitude. This is the case with most of the general public as well. Their economic and logical behavior will lead them into buying these pirated versions rather than going for the originals. To add to this problem, the places where pirated CDs and DVDs are sold have outnumbered the places where the originals are being sold. So, for what it’s worth, I guess a large part of the blame can be taken away from the customer.

The acceptance of pirated stuff, from my part, doesn’t mean that I’m for it. I firmly believe that IPR should be preserved and piracy should be eliminated but this has to come from the responsible parties of the government and the industry. This leads me to the question whether the government and the others really want this to stop completely. Listening to a lecture by the CEO of WSO2 a couple of months back, I was surprised to hear that the big companies do not take action to their full potential to prevent their products being pirated. According to him, allowing piracy to a certain extent is one of their ways of marketing their product to the less affluent areas of the globe. So, in essence, piracy let’s the people know about their product which in turn will give them the recognition in the market.

Even this does not mean that we should encourage or be indifferent to piracy. It may not be a big issue for the large companies like Microsoft, but it sure is for the local singer who’s earning a living from his innovations. It is obvious as you walk through the streets of pettah that little concern has been given to these artists and their products which are being reproduced in thousands as pirated versions.

There were several occasions in which the Sri Lankan police had raided these places and had taken thousands of these products into custody, but that’s just a temporary solution to it. The very next day these are back on the street since the sellers know that another raid wouldn’t take place for sometime. Ironically, most of these raids are been carried out on the less serious markets of pettah while in the MC or Liberty Plaza, the sellers of pirated stuff enjoy full liberty.

It seems that the government should have a much more stable policy regarding this issue and should carry out that policy for a considerable amount of time. If the pirated stuff are been removed from the market, the buyers will be compelled to buy the originals and so the IPR would be preserved to a great extent. The government should also look into other areas which are less rampant; incidents where the old songs are being looted and reproduced without the consent of the original composer and such. It seems that, with enough government intervention we can incorporate appreciating the genuine stuff in to our culture and encourage the people to purchase real products instead of the pirated.