Looks like someone [image] in the government took notice of the US Trade Representative’s recent IP infringement report (we covered it a few days ago). According to The Daily Times the Federal Investigative Agency seized over 80,000 pirated CDs, DVDs and audiocassettes during 6 separate raids in Karachi. 10 arrests were also made during the raids. This time the FIA means business: instead of going after smaller shops who sell to the end consumers, they went after factories
involved in producing pirated media. It’s interesting to see what a little motivation can do.
Do the math…BBC reported 13m pirated copies a month. That amounts to 0.615384615 percent. Any given store in rainbow center alone carries that many. This one’s for the media.
The good looking bloke in the pic…is none other than Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao
we’re not the only ones …… who took action after the report was publish. Canadian RCMP raided the Pacific Mall (almost like Karachi’s Rainbow Centre, except it’s not limited to software / media) in Toronto to recover about $800,0000 of pirated media.
yeah i read about pacificyeah i read about pacific mall. that’s a big blow to the toronto pirating industry.
- abbas halai.
Piracy is not going to stopPiracy is not going to stop until and unless we stop buying pirated CD/DVD’s — honestly ask me would I stop and now start buying really expensive software when the shop next to it carries is at a 98% discount
Will you STOP?
Software piracy in PakistanMy thoughts: Software Piracy in Pakistan
I think the ‘demand’ forI think the ‘demand’ for pirated material depends on the cost of the product and per-captia income of the region where the piracy occurs. Check this out this graph . The X axis is the piracy rate and the Y axis is the number of months it would take for a person to earn enough money to buy a copy of Windows + Office XP(*). Each dot represents a different country.
The general trend is that the poorer countries have more piracy (suprise). There are a few outliers but I think it’s because of lack of original software distributors in that region in 2001 (something that KO pointed out about Pakistan in 2004 in his comment above). If software manufacturers pull down their price to match the per-captia income of region they’d have something to shoot for.
Does anyone have piracy figures for the local music industry after they fixed the price of original cds at about Rs.100? I think Rs.100 is a good price for CDs in Pakistan.
* Data source: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_12/ghosh/index.html The survey is really old: 2001.
The Technology of PiracyAnonymous Coward - heck i had no idea there was a serious science behind software piracy
I was really impressed at the graphs that depict a relation between Piracy to GDP - 
is that another course tought in MBA?
Music CD’sI know a couple of people who pirate dvds and cds for a living (press, the whole works) if they pirate pakistani cds, and they just looked at me strangely. Apparently its not the done thing, and many shopkeepers don’t even handle pirated pakistani music cds. I checked with my local piracy music store, and got the same story - no pirated cds when an orignal is avaiable at a decent price.
For comparision sakes, a retailer gets a pirated cd from Rs. 20-60, and in clifton sells it for Rs.80-110.
A orignal pakistani cd sells for Rs.100 - the shopkeeper wouldn’t say how much he got it for, but printing/distributing costs aren’t much more than Rs.20, so there is money to be made from music/movies here.
piracy will never endwe are pakistanis do you really think such a minor blow to the factories can stop us it wont be long till shopkeepers buy dvd R s and start their own buissness.