More news on piracy today as News.com reports that Singapore has been implicated as most important transit centre for pirated DVDs produced in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Although the country is the third lowest country in terms of losses due to piracy in Asia-Pacific, it has the busiest airports and seaports in Southeast Asia and, as a by-product, serves as the region's most important piracy transport hub:
"Singapore has a strong domestic demand for pirated goods and about 15 percent of the country's entertainment-related goods are pirated," he (Michael Ellis, vice president of the U.S. Motion Picture Association) said. However, the situation has improved enough that two years ago, the MPA removed the island-state from its primary watch list of Asian piracy hotbeds. |
While the threat of DVD piracy is worsened by Internet file-sharing programs that allow people to exchange music and movies, the MPA has decided to focus on the crackdown on DVDs for now, he said.
Asia has been under constant scrutiny by intellectual property rights watchdogs such as the MPA for being the breeding ground of pirated material. Last year, the region accounted for 87 percent of the 7 million pirated DVDs seized globally.
However, countries such as Singapore have recently stepped up its efforts to combat this issue in a bid boost trade ties with Western countries. In January, the city-state agreed to enforce copyright protection as part of a free trade pact inked with the U.S.
In the article we can also read the according to statistics from the MPA, Singapore's domestic DVD piracy losses in 2002 totalled $8 million, dwarfed by losses of $168 million in China and $110 million in Japan.
Source: CNet News.com
