Property owners hold the key to law enforcement

       Two entertainment companies welcome the move to draft a new intellectual property law to increase the effectiveness of anti-piracy crackdowns, hoping that a half of the pirated products now available could disappear from the market.
       The new law is expected to place legal responsibility on property owners who allow their tenants to sell counterfeited and pirated products. Many people support this idea but are not keen on a proposal that consumers could be fined 1,000 baht if they are found buying or using such goods.
       Yongsak Ekprachyasakul, managing director of sales and marketing of GMM Grammy Plc, said that property owners who allow tenants to sell pirated products, or who know about the sales but simply ignore them, have been responsible for making the piracy problem as big as it is today.
       When police raid some shopping areas and arrest some pirated product sellers,sales might just be suspended for a day or so, and after that it's business as usual."It will be better and more practical for the crackdown if the property owners co-operate with the police and copyright owners. They should not allow any pirated product to be sold in their stores and this must be mentioned in the lease,"Mr Yongsak said.
       If tenants violate the contracts, they must have their leases terminated immediately. But if the property owners ignore piracy problems at their outlets,they must take legal responsibility and be fined.
       "If counterfeit and pirated goods sellers don't have places to sell their products, the piracy problem will be solved by more than 50%," Mr Yongsak said.
       He recalled that Grammy used to seek co-operation from many shopping malls where pirated products were sold but their landlords rarely co-operated.
       "I can say that international retail chains such as Tesco Lotus are very concerned about this issue and are trying hard to solve it. They don't want any pirated product to be sold at their outlets," he added.
       However, Mr Yongsak did not agree with the proposal to penalise consumers as many of them do not have proper knowledge and understanding about piracy.
       "I would like the authorities to think carefully about the consumer issue as it's very sensitive. If some people get pirated DVDs or counterfeit bags from friends as a present, how can we penalise them?"
       Sutthisak Prasatkarukarn, a director of Thai Copyright Collection Co, a subsidiary of RS Plc, also believes that the market for pirated and counterfeit products would be seriously hurt if the new law took effect - and was enforced.
       "Buyers may think twice when they want to buy pirated goods on the street as they may be fined. Most of the pirated product sellers will face difficulty in doing business and up to 70% of them will disappear if they are not allowed to sell in many shopping places," he said.
       Currently, piracy problems are getting bigger even though Thailand has had an IP law for a decade. It is widely known that the growing problem stems from poor law enforcement. It is estimated that pirated CDs or DVDs outnumber the genuine ones by four or five times in terms of sales in the Thai market.
       "Pirated CDs or DVDs are very easy to produce at home or just in a small apartment. The investment cost is just for a computer and blank discs, while copyright owners like us have to spend a lot on many things from the artist,songwriter, and composer to marketing activities," Mr Sutthisak said.
       Currently, only 38 factories nationwide are registered with the authorities as authorised CD producers.
       An industry source said some pirated DVD producers were not afraid of violating law.
       Some hire children or disabled people to sell their products because they know that these people will get off lightly when they are caught.
       "This problem will never end as wrongdoers don't care because lowranking police are not serious about arresting them and the court will just give them a soft punishment," the source said.