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Pakistanis have spent the better part of the last three decades getting a bad reputation amongst the international community. We have been labelled as terrorists, black market menaces (who deal in nothing less than nuclear technology), squanderers of donor aid, and smugglers of everything from humans to narcotics and precious metals. As if that weren’t bad enough, within the circles that fret about global intellectual property rights, we’re also known as thieves.
For years, the global intellectual property industry has identified Pakistan as a leading exporter of pirated media – CDS, DVDS, and VCDs of copyrighted sound recordings and films – business software, textbooks, apparel and pharmaceutical products bearing counterfeit trademarks. Owing to its poor track record with regard to intellectual property violation, Pakistan has been included on the United States Trade Representative Priority Watch List since 1989 under a ‘special 301’ procedure calling for rapid market reform. Sadly, reasons for this ignominious status abound.
According to an annual study sponsored by the Business Software Alliance, Pakistan had the twelfth highest rate in the world of personal computer software piracy in 2007 – up to 84 per cent of our computer software market comprised pirated materials. In 2005, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry listed Pakistan as one of the top 10 countries where piracy continues at “unacceptable levels.” The federation calculated that Pakistan produces 230 million optical media artefacts a year, of which only 25 million were being purchased locally. The rest, the IFPI concluded, were being exported to over 40 countries. Statistics for pirated pharmaceuticals, books and designer clothing have been harder to come by.
Such flagrant disregard for intellectually property rights is unusual, given that at the official and policy level, Pakistan has always been mindful of copyright laws. As early as 1948, Pakistan became a signatory of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. It is also a member of the Universal Copyright Convention, the World Intellectual Property Organisation and, in 1995, we signed on to the World Trade Organisation’s Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement.
Moreover, since 1962, the Copyright Ordinance, which has been regularly updated and amended to keep up with technology, has been in place to safeguard intellectual property rights. In this country, copyright theft is a non-bailable, cognisable offence punishable by up to three years’ imprisonment or a maximum Rs 100,000 fine.
Given Pakistan’s official commitment to protecting copyright, the question of why violations continue is often answered with a cliché: the laws exist, but no one enforces them. This perception is not entirely correct. Soon after Pulse Global, Pakistan’s first licensed home entertainment company, hit the scene, 117 unprecedented cases against video pirates were registered in 1995. In the following decade, the authorities have regularly launched initiatives to crackdown on piracy. But it would be unrealistic to assume that a handful of Federal Investigation Authority employees could confiscate every illegal DVD in the market. The fact is, when governments want to enforce copyright, they use a few, high profile, well-timed raids to inhere a culture of accountability.
Time and again, though, the local market has proved resistant to such measures. One of the reasons for this may be that the Pakistani public is not fully convinced that copyright violations are a crime – certainly, few would describe a little photocopying or DVD burning as outright theft.
As with many things, Pakistanis rely on conspiracy theories to help navigate the complexities of international diplomacy and global trade. Many influential businessmen within the entertainment industry, for example, believe that piracy is allowed to thrive in this country on the instructions of the United States. Their twisted logic suggests that Americans want to flood the Pakistani market with cheap, easily accessible media in an effort to westernise (that is, brainwash) locals and make them malleable and well-moulded participants in a globalised economy.
Others believe that since the most frequently pirated materials are of Indian origin – Bollywood films, pharmaceuticals, textbooks – the Pakistani government actually encourages piracy as a way to damage the Indian economy. By contextualising copyright theft as a nefarious tool in a contemporary Great Game or reframing it as a patriotic ploy against India, pirates absolve themselves of the responsibility of respecting intellectual property.
On a less conspiratorial level, there’s the belief that the First World uses copyright law as a way to suppress the Third World and that piracy is the only way to bridge the development gap. No doubt, copyrighted software, textbooks and pharmaceuticals would be prohibitively expensive in the developing world at their legal rates. But this does not mean that enforcing copyright is a way to deny the Third World health care and vital technology. Instead, this myth is propagated to reconfigure piracy as a noble activity that gives post-colonial nations a fighting chances – it’s also a thought process that eliminates the need to respect copyright.
The fact that the developing world argument is flawed can be proved by the fact that software giants such as Microsoft are not opposed to piracy in the Third World. These companies realise that by flooding developing countries with pirated materials, they are creating the markets of tomorrow. Take the example of China – after being a leader in pirated software, the country is now switching over to copyrighted products. Since, thanks to piracy, MS Windows is already an industry standard, Microsoft is now seeing booming sales across the country, a success it hopes to replicate in South Asia and Africa. In light of these corporate tactics, Pakistanis should abandon the misconception that piracy is a way to counter neo-imperialism.
In addition to sprouting complex theories, Pakistani officials, pirates and consumers have been known to declare that piracy cannot be stemmed until international organisations such as the WTO or WIPO provide cheap alternatives to fill the vacuum created when a market is purged of illegal materials. This is yet another flawed argument. When they were operating, licensed companies such as Pulse Global and Communication City enjoyed less than two per cent of the market share. With regards to software, students in Pakistan’s schools and universities can have access to free Microsoft software and development tools simply by registering with the company’s Developer’s Network Academic Alliance or DreamSpark. In other words, alternatives to pirated materials are available – we just don’t choose to use them.
For some inexplicable reason, Pakistanis seem to be in denial about the fact that by violating copyright, we’re only doing a disservice to ourselves. By exporting pirated media, we risk trade sanctions that could bar our entry in the global economy. Pharmaceuticals that are not trademarked – and therefore not regulated – could contain toxins or fatal combinations of ingredients. Pirated textbooks could misinform, while software that is not copyrighted is certain to lead to security breaches in today’s world of cyber crime. Pirated software also makes local information technology markets less lucrative, thus stifling growth and leading to fewer jobs in the IT sector.
Moreover, pirated music and film suffocates local creativity since artists who cannot count on earning a living from royalties end up becoming bankers or clerks instead. Overall, pirated materials are not taxed, and so deprive the state of a lucrative source of income, which is then compensated for by the taxation of everyday items such as food and utilities.
Ultimately, then, it seems as if piracy is not about monetary gain, poor law enforcement, or a disregard for the country’s stature within the international community – it’s about Pakistanis choosing to cling to a corrupt mentality.
