Thailand urged to get tough with movie pirates

The Motion Picture Association, an international trade organisation representing six major Hollywood studios, has called for stricter laws and more severe penalties to curb rampant piracy in Thailand, claiming the current Copyright Act 1993 is too weak.

Michael Ellis, senior vice president and regional director for Asia-Pacific, said Thailand needed to toughen its copyright law by giving legal authorities more prosecuting power. Pirated DVD manufacturers can only be fined no more than Bt800,000 and jailed for no more than four years. For retailers, the ceilings are set at Bt200,000 and two years.

In many cases, culprits get away with paying as little as Bt2,000, said Thienchai Pinvises, executive director of MPA Thailand. Thienchai, who was on the committee reviewing Article 66 of the Copyright Act, said the act allowed defendants to settle cases outside the legal system, thereby compromising the case and encouraging corruption, inadvertently or otherwise.

Today, the police are not able to prosecute, for instance, pirated-DVD hawkers at Patpong until the party whose rights have been infringed files a complaint.

The MPA, a proxy of the Motion Picture Association of America, believes that making copyright infringement a "state offence" would give the authorities the right to prosecute.

Neil Gane, MPA's senior director of operations, cited Macao, Hong Kong and Singapore as examples of places where governments have successfully clamped down on piracy by using not only copyright but anti-money laundering and organised crime control laws.

Gane believes these sellers and producers are organised crime syndicates who are also involved in other illegal trades, such as human trafficking and prostitution.

In Hong Kong, if a person is found to possess 100 pirated DVDs for the purpose of trading, he would be fined a maximum of HK$5,000 (Bt21,800) per DVD and could spend no more than four years in jail. Such offences constitute criminal liabilities - a direction Thailand should move towards, said Gane.

According to an 18-month study by MPA, a whopping Bt17.44 billion was lost in Thailand in 2005 as a result of motion-picture piracy, the majority of which was siphoned away through sales of bootleg DVDs.

Copying and downloading losses were Bt1.39 billion and Bt74.85 million, respectively.

Ki Nan Tsui

Thailand News
The Nation Thailand
Friday January 26, 2007