International film, music and software producers on Monday commended Pakistan's efforts for taking urgently-needed actions to curb the mass scale violations of copyright. "Pakistan is showing that it takes seriously the need to address its severe levels of copyright piracy," said a joint press statement issued here by the senior representatives of International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI), Business Software Alliance (BSA) and Motion Picture Association (MPA).
"We applaud the Pakistan government efforts for strongly protecting the intellectual property of the musicians, filmmakers and software developers and believe these will benefit the country," the three international groups unanimously said.
The response follows administrative reforms and strict enforcement actions announced by the government in recent weeks.
Pakistan Intellectual Property Rights Organisation (Pipro) has been created to oversee copyright, trademark and patent protection issues, while the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) arrested nine persons and confiscated more than 400,000 pirated CDs, DVDs and audio cassettes with 10,000 Master Discs (stampers) and closed down six illegal optical-disc plants in Karachi.
"We urge the authorities to maintain the pressure on those who seek to profit from the creativity of others and also hold back the development of country's domestic talent," the three representatives said. They included Willem van Adrichem, Regional Co-ordinator IFPI; Al Redha, Co-Chairman, BSA Middle East and Mary Callahan, Director Optical Disk Operations, Worldwide Anti-Piracy of the Motion Picture Association (MPA).
There are a number of talented and creative professionals in the country, but foreign investment that could help bolster these industries is undermined by the pirates, they observed. Willem van Adrichem said, "Pakistan has become one of the largest manufacturers of pirated discs in the world by producing over of 230 million discs in 2004, of which the vast majority was exported to more than 46 countries Worldwide."
A significant blow to the pirated activity in the country would encourage the local music industry, where many companies have closed down their business due to piracy, he said.
The IFPI represents the recording industry Worldwide with over 1500 members in more than 75 countries.
BSA co-chairman, Al Redha stressed that optical-disc piracy is a major threat to the software sector and said "Pakistan can attract a lot of foreign investment from BSA's member companies, if piracy is properly tackled."
He said piracy yields profits to a few persons at the expense of losses to many other creative professionals, besides harming the consumers with poor quality of software. BSA groups the world's leading software companies and operates in over 80 countries.
Mary Callahan of the MPA said: "The continued copyright protection will go a long way in promoting the Pakistani film industry, whose survival is at stake due to the losses incurred from freely available copies of unauthorised video CDs and DVDs."
She said movie making is a fairly risky business as not all the films are successful at the box office, adding: "Piracy further discourages the film studios and they reduce the number of productions."
The representatives of the three copyright industries also commended the FIA for its professionalism in handling the investigation against the six illegal disc plants.
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