Piracy

Piracy, make no bones about it, is very wrong.

The very concept of stealing an idea or a property or a right to something that belongs to someone else is basically stealing. In an ideal world, there should not be any such practice around.

Therefore, please understand that before you go on to read the rest of my entry, lest you misunderstand.

I would like to look at the topic of piracy from a different angle.

First of all, when we say piracy these days, we refer to the illegal siphoning of multimedia material such as movies and songs, and selling them without the consent or knowledge of the owner to the right of the said material. Needless to say, none of the profits will go to the owner.

There has been such a clamping down of such activities lately, as well there should, that you can see anti-piracy campaigns in the form of posters and radio and TV advertisements, and there has been a significant degree of success, in that you hardly see any of the previously rampant small shops without a proper name, interspersed among the shops in the HDB heartlands. In those days, you would be able to find a shop with no name, peddling hundreds of CDs hanging on the walls, with a healthy stream of customers browsing the many titles, in every small town centre. In some shops, blatant pornographic titles are displayed with unbelievable audacity, daring people to look at them. Now, it is a rarity to find such a shop, and even rarer to see that it still exists the next time you pass by the place.

I applaud the efforts. However, whenever I see a poster or advert that tells us to support the original stuff because piracy kills creativity, further elaborating that artistes will not survive in an age of unchecked piracy, I cannot help but stop and wonder.

Let us take the average Joe, in his early twenties. He just came out of his national service, just started work with a salary of $1800. After spending whatever he needs to spend(food, transport, splashing out to impress hot babes, etc), including saving aside a small amount of money, he is left with about $200 for his leisure. He goes to a CD shop and sees a couple of CDs he likes, and decides to buy them. That's $20 per CD. Then he goes to a video shop and finds a couple of DVDs that he likes, and decides to buy them, at $30 per DVD. Just like that, he has spent half of his leisure money for the week. He sees a DVD series that he likes, going for $90 per set, but well, he needs to ration that meagre $100 that he has left, so he leaves without buying the DVD set.

Please remember that a large part of the market for such products comes from students who only survive on pocket money from their parents.

Then we read in the papers about how this big movie star in Hollywood is being offered US$10 million per movie, or how this big TV star is being paid US$500,000 per episode, and how this other star is throwing tantrums because he is being paid US$2 million less than this other star in the same movie.

Maybe Hollywood is a bit of an extreme example, you say. After all, it is the premier centre for movies and TV shows. Let's come a little closer to home.

Recently I heard on the radio about the earnings of the top singers and variety show hosts in Taiwan, in terms of per annum. While the figures are not as fantastic as those of Hollywood stars, they still reach the range of millions of dollars, some going into 8-digit figures, if I remember correctly.

So now I wonder. Does this look like the artistes are coming anywhere near the realm of bankruptcy?

Now, some of you might argue that the examples I have listed belong to only the elite top of the crop who are immensely successful in the entertainment business. Then I ask you, why would anyone want to produce pirated copies of CDs by singers who are not famous or popular? Obviously piracy would affect the really famous stars the most.

Once again, I want to reiterate that piracy is very wrong.

But consider this: would piracy be so rampant if the prices of CDs and DVDs were more affordable? If the prices were, say, halved, would there be so many customers risking being caught by the hand of the law to buy pirated products, not to mention tolerate its inferior quality? In fact, would the profits of the entertainment industry even increase by the sheer fact that there are more buyers in the market?

Someone from the industry might argue, this is a case of supply and demand. Willing buyer, willing seller. True, he would be absolutely correct. Then I would say, in the anti-piracy campaign, focus on the illegal aspect of it, rather than putting up the unconvincing reason that we are killing off the poor artistes who would not be able to make ends meet because of the pirates.

I do not profess to know everything about how all this works, and if I have unfairly commented on any aspect, I would be happy to accept correction, but the almost obscene earnings of the celebrities make it very difficult for me to accept that the industry is doing everything they can on their part to stamp out piracy.