assalamualaikum

I would like to srat of by saying that our economy will improve if we stop piracy.If u recall in the late ninetees there were comercials on every indian channel saying stop piracy and usually there were stars talking about it. Now look at india microsoft is investing like crazy into india and so are other software/It companies. This morning i called my tech support number for my computer and the people who helped me out lived in india. So i think if the government cracked down on piracy it would send big software firms a message that pakistan would be good place to do buiseness since piracy is gone. I know that anti piracy laws when enforced strictly will put some people out of buisenss but we need to show the world some effort. India still has piracy in it but its not as close to what kind of piracy opakistan is doin. I think this idea could bring our country an improved economy and make ourcountrymore modern.

The software is expensive in Pakistan and other developing countries so they use pirated copies. It is essential at this point that we train our people with Computer technology as soon as possible in any way we can. Software piracy in Pakistan does not even show up in Software companies's radar screen, Probably there is more pirated sofware being used in Miami than in whole of Pakistan. The vast majority of pirated sofware is being used by students to learn and get exprience with sofware tools. Even the computer text books are around $60 too much for Pakistani students. So you can buy photocopies of textbooks for Rs 200. I think the most large and medium sized companies should have legal licenses. Even in US and Canada, Microsoft/IBM/Oracle/Sun Microsystems/Adobe/Micromedia usually don't go after students and individuals but they target large and meduim sized companies for software piracy.

IBM and Microsoft build their software labortories in few countries besides US. Pakistan is a small market with little or no software talent so they will not build their laboratories in Pakistan. These companies will have distribution center, technical support, technical training, and salespersons in Pakistan. Only US, India, Japan, and France have laboratories to develop new software tools. So if piracy ended in Pakistan tomorrow the big losers will be Pakistani themseleves. The software prices have to come down for third world countries or Pakistani standard of living has to come up in line with US.

Pakistan is the largest producer of Digital Media in the World. The piracy in Pakistan shakes a lot of things. American pop singers want Pakistan to stop piracy too, because there CD's get done in Pakistan, etc.

Movies that are made in India, bollywood films, there CD's, DVD's go from Pakistan, if you watch them, you'd see all Pakistani commercials.

Pakistan is also the world's fourth largest exporter of piracy software, games, music, etc. This is according to last year, might be higher now.

I dont think he was talking about movies and music. and in our own interest we going to need the pirated copies since an average person can pay for the expenses of the whole house for price of one windows xp.

about the movies and stuff. well mostly its the shops who support the pirated movies. and by the way piracy is a world problem. more stuff gets pirated on bittorent sites everyday then pakistani can do in one month.

now the piracy cannot stop someone from some one to setup a media production company. lets take the music. if any record company makes cd's in pakistan then they have to pay lot less wages that means lower cost. and then they can sell it over here for almost the same price. but if the price difference is like double than obviously no one gonna go buy it but if price is marginally higher lets say 25 ruppee than obviously lot more people gonna buy it for authentic look and printing quality. i know i would go and buy any original english cd just for the inlays.

Actually i was talking about any piracy................If pakistan stops piracy i bet my bottom dollar microsoft will inves in us like mad

You have to describe what do you mean by investment by Microsoft in Pakistan ? There are software laboratories which develop new version of their software packages. They only hire creme de la creme of highly competetive universities. Pakistan had only 5 PhD in Computer Science two years ago. An American or European University has more Computer Science PhDs in their staff than in whole of Pakistan !! Pakistan does not have qualified teachers to produce high class graduates that can be hired by Microsoft software laboratories. The only staff they will hire in Pakistan will be technical support.

I mean people in pakistan will be able to do tech support jobs
and the economy should improve as IT companies move in................but there are alot of IT students in pakistan...........................................I just mean that pakistan is toooooooooooo backwars indias economy was bad 10-20 years back and pakistan wasted that time they had soo the antipiracy thing ithink would be a good way to get investos in pakistan because there are companies and musicians who want pakistan to stop the piracy

why would they do the tech support in pakistan when they getting way more cheaper labor from india. i will never do that. and they dont want their laboratories everywhere over the world. just whatever they need.

I think we need to raise the quality of knowledge that our universities impart. we are far behind Indians and Chinese universities......PLUS Pakistan should crack down on piracy only when we are somewhere near developing some good stuff in Pakistan....just to lend it support from the home market....before that let the kids play with cheap software and it doesn't cost Microsoft or Oracle much.... they know how many copies can they sell in Pakistan...or put in other words...how many Pakistanis can pay the real price.

I work for a book publisher, not a printer, a PUBLISHER. Our biggest concern is book piracy. How we controlled it? We made a contract with two main book distributors in Urdu Bazaar. We sell bulk books to them, they have a stake, they stop piracy in Urdu Bazaar, and generally everwhere. :) Smart huh?

Microsoft should do the same. One CD of Windows XP costs less than $2 or $3 to them, they could easily sell in hundreds and thousand to some local influential distributor in Pakistan. Then it's his problem, he's a stakeholder. Feudal system rules baby.

Pakistan is going to get sanctions by apr 30th if it doesent stop piracy.....................................I told u it would help if we stopped piracy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!










http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?p...15-3-2005_pg5_1

stopping piracy is an extremely difficult job man!


it happened once in Oman.....the government tried to inforce it for the computer programmes and games.....and after toooo much struggle it is finnaly stopped recently it tried to inforce the same law for PS2 games.....but ended up in terrible failure.......only for 1 week people hid their games (shops i mean) but now they r easily avalible.......


pak is much larger than oman and its people r more DHEET than omanis....lol

the software belongs to the people and should be free to use but at enterprise level i dont mind stoping piracy. in learning we need to improve piracy:):)

they can go with microsoft we should go wth unix and linux:):). like make our own imagine PAK linux:)

I know how hard it is man but we need to do sumthin before we get sanctions on ourselves and then were gonna go down economicaly

I know very much about the Peoples involved in piracy, specially I am talking Owner's of the companies, and some of there secrets, I am waiting for the right time, i hope ur forum & user's will support me to disclose the secrets and there jobs, which they are using to unbold pakistan and insulting our great culture.

ibrahim ill suppot u

oh come on, you can find a million piracy retailers in Rainbow Centre Karachi, but no one's gonna do anything about it, even the President probably buys pirated stuff.

Pakistani Universities are getting better. Most of the Staff in the good ones like LUMS are all graduates of universities in North America.

A coorection note

Piracy in India is alive and kicking. You can get any software, pirated. Even large corporations and government use pirated software.

Well in some countries, distribution of original software is so crap (like the Anime situation in Canada), that you can't blame consumers for going for pirated material. For instance, there's something for $24.99 that hasn't released yet, and you have to wait 2-3 extra months (after original release date) for it to release, then when it does, it is at a stupid price like $36.99. Man in that time, any smart consumer could go to the Chinese mall accross the street and get the same thing (pirated) for $11.99.

A coorection note

Piracy in India is alive and kicking. You can get any software, pirated. Even large corporations and government use pirated software.

They have piracy in canada??

Yep!
Chinese malls like Pacific Mall in Toronto make a ton out of pirated DVDs, games, and computer software. It doesn't end in Toronto, go to British Columbia, haha, you'll see a Chinese mall in every neighbourhood in Vancouver.

Th smart chinese

Why do we need at all to copy.. the open source product are actually much better then the products we buy copies of in Pak....

I link an article here from dawn. Read it and you will realize the benefits pak can get by choosing open source:

http://dawn.com/weekly/science/science6.htm

If we want us self to be different and unique from India, we should take another path then them, and I personally think open source products is a good area to focus on.

Pakistan efforts to curb copyright piracy lauded

ISLAMABAD (May 24 2005): International film, music and software producers on Monday commended Pakistan's efforts for taking urgently-needed actions to curb the mass scale violations of copyright. "Pakistan is showing that it takes seriously the need to address its severe levels of copyright piracy," said a joint press statement issued here by the senior representatives of International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI), Business Software Alliance (BSA) and Motion Picture Association (MPA).

"We applaud the Pakistan government efforts for strongly protecting the intellectual property of the musicians, filmmakers and software developers and believe these will benefit the country," the three international groups unanimously said.

The response follows administrative reforms and strict enforcement actions announced by the government in recent weeks.

Pakistan Intellectual Property Rights Organisation (Pipro) has been created to oversee copyright, trademark and patent protection issues, while the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) arrested nine persons and confiscated more than 400,000 pirated CDs, DVDs and audio cassettes with 10,000 Master Discs (stampers) and closed down six illegal optical-disc plants in Karachi.

"We urge the authorities to maintain the pressure on those who seek to profit from the creativity of others and also hold back the development of country's domestic talent," the three representatives said. They included Willem van Adrichem, Regional Co-ordinator IFPI; Al Redha, Co-Chairman, BSA Middle East and Mary Callahan, Director Optical Disk Operations, Worldwide Anti-Piracy of the Motion Picture Association (MPA).

There are a number of talented and creative professionals in the country, but foreign investment that could help bolster these industries is undermined by the pirates, they observed. Willem van Adrichem said, "Pakistan has become one of the largest manufacturers of pirated discs in the world by producing over of 230 million discs in 2004, of which the vast majority was exported to more than 46 countries Worldwide."

A significant blow to the pirated activity in the country would encourage the local music industry, where many companies have closed down their business due to piracy, he said.

The IFPI represents the recording industry Worldwide with over 1500 members in more than 75 countries.

BSA co-chairman, Al Redha stressed that optical-disc piracy is a major threat to the software sector and said "Pakistan can attract a lot of foreign investment from BSA's member companies, if piracy is properly tackled."

He said piracy yields profits to a few persons at the expense of losses to many other creative professionals, besides harming the consumers with poor quality of software. BSA groups the world's leading software companies and operates in over 80 countries.

Mary Callahan of the MPA said: "The continued copyright protection will go a long way in promoting the Pakistani film industry, whose survival is at stake due to the losses incurred from freely available copies of unauthorised video CDs and DVDs."

She said movie making is a fairly risky business as not all the films are successful at the box office, adding: "Piracy further discourages the film studios and they reduce the number of productions."

The representatives of the three copyright industries also commended the FIA for its professionalism in handling the investigation against the six illegal disc plants.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2005

Pirated Star Wars hits Pakistan

By Aamer Ahmed Khan
BBC News, Karachi

The pirated edition of the latest Star Wars episode has finally appeared in Pakistan, five days after it was released in cinemas worldwide.

A police crackdown - Pakistan is one of the top 10 producers of pirated DVDs - caused the delay.

Karachi retailers sold hundreds of copies in under an hour late Monday as many people had already booked copies.

"Pakistan-wide sales are expected to be around 50,000 copies within the first two weeks," one leading retailer said.


Raids

The appearance of Revenge of the Sith - the sixth and final edition of George Lucas' epic galactic adventure - in the city's pirate market "was well behind schedule", retailers told the BBC News website.

Things are improving once again - we are expecting 30 new movies this week

Karachi retailer


Pakistan's entrenched piracy

Most new English-language movies are pirated within 48 hours of their release, they say. Indian movies, by comparison, are released in Pakistan's pirate market three days before their legal release in Indian cinemas.

The delay has occurred because of a recent crackdown on replication facilities in the city.

Three of Karachi's estimated 11 replication facilities were raided by the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) earlier in the month.

The owner and manager of one facility were arrested and more than 300,000 pirated DVDs were recovered from the three plants.

PAKISTAN PIRACY
Pirate DVD fetches at least $1 in Pakistan, $10 abroad
Over 13m pirate copies exported a month
About 230m replica discs made every year
Domestic piracy market worth $27m a year
Annual cost to copyright holders - at least $2.7bn
IFPI estimated figures


Pakistan - piracy hub

Retailers say their business was badly hurt as no new releases hit the market for nearly two weeks after the raid.

"Things are improving once again," said one retailer. "We are expecting 30 new movies this week."

But despite the resumption in supply, the effects of the raids are still visible. For one, Revenge of the Sith is not being openly displayed in shops.

Shopkeepers say they are wary of offering it to new customers as they may well be FIA agents in disguise.

Prices up

Pressure from the authorities has also made pirated versions more expensive. Previously sold for $1.50, new movies are now selling for just over $2.


Pirated Indian DVDs are also big business in Pakistan

But no one is complaining. The cinema industry in Pakistan has all but collapsed and cinema owners say they cannot afford to import movies until they are at least two years old.

Star Wars fans are only too happy to spend the additional half dollar to avoid the long wait.

Shopkeepers say Revenge of the Sith has done the briskest business in Karachi since the Return of the King - the last part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Not only that, the concluding Star Wars episode has also given them a chance to resell the earlier five episodes.

These earlier episodes have all been put into one DVD (costing $2), and shopkeepers say a large number of customers are buying the five-in-one DVD along with the latest release.

Retailers are now anxiously awaiting Nazar, a steamy Indian romance featuring the famous Pakistani actress Meera.

They are confident that the controversy generated by some of the lewder scenes in the movie will ensure good sales.


BBC

i hear microsoft is investing in ppunjab anybody have details on that

How do you know this?

Many countries have bigger software industry than India in this world. I never know and no one tell me what kind of software brands indian companies own. bascially, India has a bout $6-$7 billion software. Others are just data entry, calling center and so on. These jobs are just labour work in the IT fields and cannot be considered as high tech by any means.

Piracy in India is low because there are much less personal users there. Biz users trends to buy software. But personal users.... even americans buy pirated software, download musics and movies.

For example, Only less than 4 million PC were sold in India, the IT superpower.

more than 13 million were sold in China.