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 | ENFORCEMENT |  |
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| ENFORCEMENT | |
Enforcement is usually reactive - apprehending counterfeit goods, at trans-shipment points or points of sale, then trying to follow the trail upline. A counterfeit optical disc found at customs or in a retail shop may have a paper trail that is either fictional or deceptive. This contrasts with tracking down operators of illegal internet sites, where the online server permits investigation of the source of wrongdoing.
Quality information is often the lifeblood for many kinds of enforcement. Agencies can encourage and cultivate informers. They serve as a clearinghouse for helpful data such as product packaging identifiers usually present only on genuine merchandise.6 From country to country, the quality of local informants is often the single major factor in enforcement efforts. Other important agency functions include: maintaining hotlines for whistleblowers, assisting local legal systems, and improving the public perception of intellectual property rights.
Pride and kudos are justified for the intense work these public-spirited agencies have accomplished. However their efforts are severely dwarfed by the relative growth of this illegal line of business. Contraband seizures and estimates of loss of trade are meaningful but only skirt the edges of a criminal activity that is raging out of control. When a consumer is actually able to detect a fake, they are more averse to buying it than ever before. It's likely that in the future more counterfeiters will serve jail time. But in illicit optical discs especially, the growth of the piracy trade is expected to increase far faster than the best efforts of enforcement agencies to control it.
Bob Kruger, Director of Enforcement for the BSA, has said:
"To the extent every advance in technology makes it easier for copyright owners to produce their goods at a lower cost, you're lowering the barriers for entry for the people who are looking to make money from the production of illicit goods. It's almost a self-evident principle."
Standard compact disc replicating technology has already seen tremendous progress in economies of scale, and DVD promises to fall in price still faster since the incredibly low cost-per-megabyte is bound to find market appeal. DVD can hold a great deal more than four times what will fit on a standard CD-ROM, and nobody expects it to be more than four times as expensive after the first two years.
So despite the commonly held viewpoint that enforcement is the "best weapon" against piracy, and accepting that a zero tolerance enforcement attitude should be presented to the world at large, the sad truth is that these agencies are caught in a perpetual game of "catch-up" with the bad guys. Tony Adamski, former Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy for the MPAA (employed by them as a consultant at the time of this interview), admits:
"In the end, the law enforcement card is not going to be the one that wins this battle."
Logic says that if you send out a posse to catch an army, no matter how tough they are, they can only return with the stragglers.
When U.S. criminal enforcement agencies focus on counterfeiting, it is often because their anti-drug efforts have afforded them a window to work on lower-priority crime. The DEA and other agencies (as well as the DOD) have made a much more concerted attack on narcotics than will ever be attempted against non-currency counterfeiting. Perhaps the best hope for anti-counterfeiting enforcement is that it will succeed as well as efforts against drugs. For the commercial interests of title-holders, this means something more has to be done.
QUICK-TAKE
The following brief profiles of several agencies are cursory but illustrative of both their effectiveness and lack of effectiveness in curtailing the massive trade in counterfeit goods and optical discs in particular.
(See Reference Section E and Resources & Other Information for additional data.)
written April 1996 -- please send comments to veyr@primenet.com |  |
© ZOOM TELEVISION, INC. 1996, all rights reserved |