South African Piracy
South African Piracy
As we know it was the rAge Expo two weekends back, and I have written a basic coverage post on the event with pictures etc… http://txgaming.co.za/events/rage-2009/
One of the stalls present at the expo, which I did leave out of the main post, was the SAFACT stall.
SAFACT is The Southern African Federation against Copyright Theft.
Established in 1999 as a Section 21 Company, an association not for gain, SAFACT’s primary role is to protect the intellectual property rights of its members in the Southern African film, home entertainment and interactive games industries.
“SAFACT’s mission is to create an anti-counterfeiting climate in which the purchase, sale or possession of counterfeit goods is actively discouraged and intellectual property rights are respected.
The Motion Picture Association has been involved in anti-piracy activities in South Africa since 1981. SAFACT was formed by companies in the entertainment industry involved in the production and distribution of motion pictures and interactive games.”
They had a stall at the rAge expo with numerous items, including: Play Station 3 and 2 Controllers, Play Station Memory Cards, Music Cds, Dvds and Software.
The idea behind the stall was to illustrate to the people who were interested just how close to original counterfeit products can be. They also had a handy flyer with guidelines of discreet points to look at when buying potential pirated goods.
I did some further research after the show regarding the whole scenario.
I found that SAFACT does have some very creative ideas when it comes to their challenge, one of these reads as follows:
“South Africa’s Anti Piracy Foundation has come up with a inventive new weapon in the fight against pirated DVDs – fake pirated DVDs.
According to the Financial Mail, the new campaign involves joining pirate vendors at street corners to sell fake discs, but with a twist. Only when the buyers of the fakes play the DVDs will they realise they’ve been fooled. After a few moments of the genuine movie, a message appears on the screen: “Thank you for buying this DVD. Your R40 has been donated to the Anti Piracy Foundation. Piracy is a crime.” Advertising agency TBWA Hunt Lascaris, which developed the campaign, says that while the bold strategy is risky, it’s necessary to combat the problem of copyright theft. “This issue demands some edginess in the advertising to make a strong point,” TBWA group CEO Mike Bosman told the Financial Mail.”
I must admit this sounds like a solid good idea. And it would be very effective, when targeting the “selling” of pirated goods.
As I am very involved in the gaming and general PC industry this was quite a interesting element to see at rAge. I’m not going to beat around the bush here, but everyone I know has either pirated software, games, movies or series in their possession. The thing is that none of them have purchased these products though?
What I’m getting at is: It seems like SAFACT and similar organisations around the world are very persistent on stopping illegal “copying, production and selling” of copyrighted media and hardware. However, in my frame of reference I’d say that internet piracy is much bigger of a threat to copyright laws?
I know some people with over 1000 movies on their hard drive, if this had to be converted to cash value; you’re looking at a odd R350 000 collection… In the same breath I have to add that the person wouldn’t have bought even 10% of those movies if he had to pay DVD prices for them… I do understand that it is much more difficult to control online content, and that it bridges “impossible” to monitor user downloads when talking specific content. Therefore a different strategy needs to be employed?
Einstein once said: “A problem will never be solved when you’re trying to figure it out with the same state of mind as when you created the problem.” My guess is that the collective state of mind in the whole industry was “making a lot of money”
And this gets me to my next point. And I’m saying this with my limited knowledge of the publishing and production industry. But wouldn’t the fight against piracy be easier if media was made available at better selling prices?
See the way I see it is: If it costs you 3 million rand to make and produce a movie, what is the difference weather you make back your 3 million by selling 10,000 copies of the movie at R300 each, or if you make it by selling 100,000 at R30? Wouldn’t everybody buy Original DVDs if they were sold at an odd R50 or so? And the same goes for any other media, software, music, games. I’d be just to glad to buy Windows 7 for R200 as to the projected R2000 it will cost. And who will mind paying R50 for games like Avatar, Starcraft 2, Splinter Cell Conviction etc… We already pay a lot of money for our PCs and consoles. So wouldn’t more affordable games even benefit console and hardware manufacturers alike?
If you ask me it’s because of pricing that piracy primarily exists. I say make it affordable and people will buy it? I don’t know if this is just me thinking to quickly regarding the situation, or if it’s me just not having enough knowledge when it comes to the subject. But more often than not the simplest solution is the best one?
I urge anyone reading this to please reply if you have any extra info or input.
For more info please visit: http://www.safact.co.za/index.htm
This was posted by eben who has posted 7 items.
→ Eben Trollip said on: October 15, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Nice timing MyADSL. Here is a post on the same subject: http://mybroadband.co.za/news/ADSL/9998.html