DVD pirates invade the Middle East

The digital revolution hasn't changed everything. Take, for instance, Rachid Soubra's labeling system. In the days of VHS, Soubra, who runs a DVD and multimedia store on the outskirts of Beirut, sought to legitimize his business of pirated videocassettes with a professional tricolor labeling system: films with the store's pink stamp denoted original tapes; white labels were top-notch copies; and blue were for those flicks that were cam shots of a preview and where you could hear the audience laugh and spot the odd head in the theater.

The onset of DVDs has altered only the medium and the quality of the copies. If you want a DVD copy of A Beautiful Mind or The Fellowship of the Ring, no problem. They are on sale for $3 in VCD format, blue label, or, splashing out for the white label, for $5 for the original DVD copy. "It's not like I earn much money doing this," says Soubra. "But it's a way to survive."

Stores like Soubra's are hotbeds of pirated films, but the trade is not confined to their boundaries: the inevitable cardboard box crammed with pirated discs can be found in crowded streets and in souks across the Middle East.

And the general public urges the pirates on. Piracy has become so commonplace in the Arab region that consumers rarely give it a second thought. While everyone knows pirated goods are illegal, no one cares. Soubra sums it up in proverbial fashion, "If everyone does wrong, no one will be punished."
Mohammad Sahyoun, who runs a similar outlet in Beirut's Hamra Street, agrees. "No one thinks of it as theft anymore," he says. "At first, there was no choice but to pay $30 for a movie. But now, at $5 for a DVD copy, people just think, 'It's very cheap, very cheap; that's good!'"

Arab consumers have become so accustomed to cheap, pirated goods that they are unwilling to pay full prices for the real thing. Traditional Arab moral relativism combines with a modern sense of short-term opportunity cost and self-interest to justify what most acknowledge is illegal and wrong on some level.

Dollar figures for losses attributed to counterfeit goods are notoriously hard to pin down, but there appears to be little question that whatever the numbers are, they are big. With technology advanced to the point where a burner can crank out 30,000-40,000 discs per day, global pirate sales have soared. According to the London-based watchdog group, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, sales of pirated discs reached 450 million in 2001, representing an estimated $4.3 billion.

Moreover, audiovisual piracy is costing businesses well over $1 billion a year in Europe alone. The Arab region has an even poorer record when it comes to enforcing intellectual property rights (IPRs). By some estimates, counterfeits outnumber genuine products in the Arab market by three to one.

In the Middle East, stricter laws - particularly on software piracy - have stemmed the tide only slightly, because anti-piracy laws are enforced haphazardly at best, and everyone knows it. Furthermore, while Arab governments have, to a greater or lesser degree, reformed their legal codes to cover infringements of software piracy - criminalizing not only the production but also the sale and purchase of illegal software - they have been slow to promulgate similar laws for the multimedia and audiovisual market.

While Hollywood will hardly be sunk by piracy's encroachment on their profit margins in the Middle East, the situation is nonetheless grim domestically. In Lebanon, for instance, the economics-obsessed leadership is well aware of the damage done to its economy and international reputation, especially in light of Lebanon's planned accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). While foreign investment is the great white hope of Lebanon's teetering economy - and there are unyielding WTO rules regarding IPRs - ripping off the products of a foreign or foreign-invested company is, for the average Lebanese citizen, a far more golden opportunity.

However, the region's intellectual property mess isn't entirely bleak either. Piracy may be bad for business but it's great for consumers; and in some ways it's good for society. By providing small-business opportunities to the uneducated or unemployed underclass, piracy plays a role - however minor - in relieving socio-economic unrest, particularly in poorer Arab countries.

Copycat productions can also serve as chinks in the armor of state censorship: films that have been banned or cut for their allegedly offensive content can be found in their original glory. Moreover, movies from the United States and elsewhere can take as long as a year to arrive at local theaters and even longer to come out on legal DVD. But illegal copies of Hollywood blockbusters appear in VCD format weeks after their release - and sometimes they appear even before their release, as copies of promotional versions.

Consider, for instance, the case of Attack of the Clones - an ironic title given that an enterprising person managed to take a small video camera to the absolute preview screening and, within a few hours, was able to upload the entire film to the Internet. According to some calculations, over 1 million people in the world had seen the film before its release.

The Middle East is a place where anti-piracy efforts would be difficult to implement even under the best of circumstances. Authorities tend to focus more on appearances than substance, and it remains a region mired in symbolic gestures and short-lived campaigns.

Software piracy is again a case in point. Despite watertight legislation, pirated Windows and Adobe programs are still easily available in most Arab capitals. Foreign observers are fond of bemoaning the region's lack of a coherent legal system, but that is only half of the equation. The flip side is that Arab law is generally relative, depending on whether you get caught and, more importantly, who you are (and who you know).