Piracy Crippling Burma’s Music Industry

Piracy in Burma has brought the country’s music industry to its knees, according to performers and music producers, who say they can no longer compete with the stream of cheap copies of CDs and VCDs.

“Piracy drives the industry into absolute paralysis,” well-known songwriter Maung Thit Min told The Irrawaddy. “We used to discuss intellectual property laws under the World Intellectual Property Organization, but nothing has been done to follow these guidelines.”


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Extradited piracy leader sentenced to 51 months

Hew Raymond Griffiths, a 44-year-old British national living in Australia and leader of one of the oldest and most widely recognized Internet software piracy groups in the 90s called DrinkOrDie, was extradited to the U.S. in February and sentenced this past Friday to 51 months in prison on one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement.

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More about drink or die

Hostel II director blames piracy for poor box office sales

Director Eli Roth is speaking out about the lackluster box-office for his latest film, Hostel: Part II, and he's blaming everyone but himself. Roth puts piracy front and center as the reason for the film's performance. "Piracy has become worse than ever now, and a stolen workprint (with unfinished music, no sound effects, and no VFX) leaked out on online before the release, and is really hurting us, especially internationally," he says, before going on to specifically tear into critics who reviewed a leaked copy of the film.

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Weapon against piracy

One of the most ubiquitous scenes that you will observe outside many railway stations in Mumbai is of people selling pirated CDs and DVDs. Nowadays, it's become very easy for anybody to create such multiple copies (and sell them) even without having any appropriate right to do so. It's illegal and it is causing huge losses to the companies producing the original versions.

Yes, there are copyright laws. But, these laws are inadequate to stop or control the distribution of digital content through media devices or the Internet. This is where Software Digital Rights Management (DRM) comes into the picture. "The only way to stop software piracy is to protect software from unauthorised use. And this can be done through DRM," says Shailendra Sahasrabudhe, Country Manager, Aladdin Knowledge Systems – a global major in this industry.

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NBC wants government crackdown on piracy

NBC Universal has told America's communications regulator, the FCC, that the US government needs to do more to encourage the removal of pirated content from the internet.

The FCC is currently taking comments in relation to net neutrality over fears that ISPs and telecom providers could seek to block or downgrade the delivery to subscribers of certain applications and or content from competitors. NBC used its filing on the topic to address the issue of the piracy of intellectual property.

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Piracy more dangerous than bank robbing

NBC'S top lawyer, Rick Cotton, has said that too much money was spent defending society from bank robbers, fraud and burglary.
Cotton said that policing money should be spent doing more about piracy instead.

He said that law enforcement resources were "seriously misaligned". If you add up all the various kinds of property crimes in this country, everything from theft, to fraud, to burglary, bank-robbing, it only costs the country $16 billion a year.

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Sounds a little far-fetched to me...ed.

China, US to step up anti-piracy work

China has promised to pursue product pirates identified by US authorities in a new effort to stamp out counterfeit products, the head of the US customs agency said Friday.

Under a memorandum of cooperation signed this week, US Customs will provide China with information on the source of seized goods, and Beijing will report back within 90 days on the status of efforts to track down the counterfeiters, Basham told reporters.

"We've got to start dealing with the source of the problem. We can't expect to rely upon interdiction to be our tool in order to stop these products," Basham said.

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Software piracy widespread in Azerbaijan, says ICT minister

“Software piracy is widespread in Azerbaijan. The piracy is around 21-23% in the United States while the level is 93-95% in our country. We have therefore decided to frame legal framework for intellectual property and software use,” said Ali Abbasov, the country’s communications and information technologies minister.

He added that the first move will come to license software used in computers of the government bodies.

“The government will control the process. The schools are provided with licensed software at present within the scope of the government program to computerize education institutions,” he underscored.

Hey, what and where the heck is Azerbaijan?

Hitachi, Oracle jointly fight piracy in China

Japanese electronics group Hitachi and U.S. software firm Oracle Corp. plan to jointly market wireless tags that help to identify counterfeit goods in China, the Nikkei business daily said on Sunday.

Hitachi and Oracle will market the IC, or integrated circuit, tags for a wide range of products, including cash vouchers, luxury items and home appliances, the Nikkei said. IC tags are tiny chips that can store basic information about a product such as where it was produced and by which company.

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Pirated products valued at $200 billion

The value of global counterfeited goods traded in 2005 was at least 200 billion dollars (148 billion euros) and could be several hundred billion dollars more, the Paris-based OECD estimated on Monday.

The multilateral economics body, which has 30 member countries, released details of an 18-month probe into counterfeiting and piracy worldwide that aimed to shed light on the shadowy business of bootlegs and fakes.

The figure of 200 billion dollars, based on international customs data, did not include counterfeit and pirated products that were produced and consumed in the same country, the OECD said

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