Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) Australia and Sydney Markets Limited today announced a joint campaign to help reduce piracy of PlayStation games at Australia's biggest community markets. The campaign will mostly work towards increasing awareness among stand holders of the illegal definition of software piracy and intellectual property rights in the eyes of the law, along with an awareness of SCE Australia's aggressive and proactive stance towards piracy offenders.
SCE Australia has established its very own legal strike force to target big-time producers of pirated material. However, sueing small-time piracy criminals is generally not a cost effective activity. The joint campaign between Sony and Sydney Markets Limited allows Sony some leverage on the potential offenders by those who have some influence over them, effectively the market stand holders' employers.
Geoff Bell, Sydney Markets Limited Chief Executive Officer is pleased to be able to take part in stamping out piracy at his markets through the enhanced cooperation policy with Sony.
"We have always sought to cooperate with all intellectual property rights holders, and by joining forces with SCE Australia in implementing its awareness campaign, we can continue to actively enforce the prohibition on the sale of pirate PlayStation* games at our markets," Mr Bell said.
Stand holders who sell pirated goods which infringe SCE Australia's trade marks, or who breach relevant copyright legislation, stand to lose their rights to trade at Paddy's Markets.
"We are reinforcing the already clear message that this kind of activity will not be tolerated in our markets," Mr Bell declared.
This retail-scale anti-piracy offensive is one of the last remaining targets of opportunity for SCE Australia, who claim to lose millions every year to illegal sales of pirated software and the recently illegalised copyright circumvention devices, or -mod-chips" which allow PlayStation machines to use the cheaper pirate software.
Piracy in Australian markets is big business," says SCE Australia managing director Michael Ephraim. "We are pleased that SML is continuing to take such a strong cooperative approach to combating piracy. We look forward to working together with Sydney Markets Limited and hope that other market operators around the country will follow their lead. However, SCE Australia will take whatever action is needed, including legal action, to address the problem in other markets."
Figures released by Sony indicate that pirated software constitutes up to thirty percent of total sales of interactive software in Australia. The informal atmosphere of community markets is a ripe platform for distribution of illegally pirated material, contributing to the Australian interactive software industry losing an estimated one hundred million dollars annually from the effects of piracy, according to Sony.
Geoff Bell said, "It's hard for market operators to monitor every stall, especially when we don't necessarily know what to look for. Working with SCE Australia in this way is an effective and efficient way to tackle the problem. I would encourage all market operators to introduce such a campaign in order to protect intellectual property rights holders, market customers and themselves."
Michael Ephraim had few comforting words for those breaking copyright law. "Counterfeiting is theft," he says. "The victims of this theft are firstly games publishers and developers and secondly computer software retailers who invest money and time into establishing their businesses, only to see their returns jeopardised by pirates who pay no tax and invest nothing back into the industry."
Background - Sony Computer Entertainment Australia is leading the local charge against gaming software pirates, having established their own legal strike force in 2000 to target and litigate big-time offenders. This latest development sees them even more aggressively pursuing software piracy into the small-scale, trapping the illegal activities where they are hardest to regulate - the temporary and low-exposure delivery in local markets such as Paddy's Markets in Sydney's Flemington and Haymarket.
There is no piracy. The term piracy comes from hundreds of years ago when sailors used ships to attack other ships and take away physical property from others to enrich themselves. One side lost property the other side gained property. Piracy. Here we have digital knowledge and information which can be multiplied limitless. One person can take information property of another and use it without that other person losing property. This is not piracy.
It's the same as Brazil taking away the right of Roche to sell AIDS drugs to them. They decided to simply take the property knowledge of how to make AIDS drugs and multiply it for the use of their poor AIDS infected citizens. The society wins by multiplying information for the good of the people.
The corporations lose but it doesn't matter because human good stands above corporate profits or so it should.