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Piracy hotspot Bangladesh bootlegged to bankruptcy
By Shafiq Alam (AFP) 5 hours ago
DHAKA Bangladeshi pop icon Azam Khan has amassed legions of fans and dozens of hits over a 40-year career -- but he's always flat broke because of rampant music piracy.
When the 61-year-old star, revered for modernising the staid Bangla music scene in the 1970s, was diagnosed with mouth cancer this year he had to beg fans, including Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, to fund life-saving treatment.
"I've recorded 17 best-selling albums over my career but I have made less than 700,000 taka (10,000 dollars) in royalties," Khan told AFP from his sickbed in his modest two-bedroom house in the capital Dhaka.
"If I'd had this many hit albums in Europe, I'd own a private jet. In Bangladesh, rickshaw drivers will sometimes give me a free ride out of pity," he added.
Khan's experience is an extreme example of a broader global trend: demand for music is rising, but street piracy through counterfeit CDs and online piracy means profits for record companies and artists are being hit.
In Asia, street piracy is the major problem, which experts say is partly because options for consumers to buy or download music legally are limited. Apple's online iTunes store, for example, is still unavailable in most of the region.
This means that in markets like Bangladesh, where top music albums can sell millions of copies, consumers have little choice but to buy from music pirates.
"Sometimes it is literally impossible to buy legal copies of an album, the only thing available in the market is pirated disks," said Kumar Bishwajit, who heads the Music Industry Owners Association of Bangladesh.
As a result, intellectual property theft is a thriving billion-dollar industry in Bangladesh, and this has decimated the local music industry, said Nazmul Haq, owner of music firm G-Series.
Ten major Bangla-language recording companies, all long-established names, have folded in five years, and even major mobile phone companies routinely steal hit songs to use as ringtones without paying royalties, he said.
"If we have a hit album, we can make money only on the day of release. The next day bootleg disks are flooding markets, sold at a fraction of our price," he said.
Piracy is not limited to music: Bangladesh is also the Asian country with the highest software piracy rate, according to a list prepared by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) for 2009.
Globally, losses due to software piracy were more than 50 billion dollars in 2009, with some 16.5 billion of this in the Asia-Pacific region, the BSA said, adding that in Bangladesh some 91 percent of software used is pirated.
This is bad news for Bangladeshi software developers, said Mostafa Jappar, head of the Bangladeshi Computer Council, who copyrighted the first Bangla-language computer font in 1989.
"More than 10 million computers in Bangladesh use my font but less than one percent of these use original copies," he said, adding that piracy had cost him millions of dollars of lost revenue.
"It discourages entrepreneurs from developing more Bangla-language software and has cost the country tens of thousands of new jobs," he added.
Bangladesh is trying to crack down on pirates, passing a comprehensive anti-piracy law in 2000, updating it in 2005 with 10-year jail terms for pirates, and deploying the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) an elite police group.
In the 18 months to September this year, RAB teams conducted more than 500 raids, arresting 1,050 suspected copyright pirates, seizing more than two million disks and filing 375 cases, according to RAB statistics.
"It hasn't had a noticeable impact," said Major Masum Ahmed, head of the RAB's anti-piracy wing, adding that the vast majority of Bangladeshis do not realise buying fake goods is a crime.
The raids have focused on music, software and film, the worst-hit target of pirates. In March, Ahmed's team arrested the country's most notorious film pirate and extortionist, Biplab.
Biplab, who uses one name, would copy a film on the first day it was released then ring the producer, demanding large sums of cash in return for not selling the copy to the markets or to cable television networks.
"I don't know of any film producer in the country who has not received threats from Biplab. For the last three years, he held the whole movie industry hostage," said Motaleb Hossain, a director and a film producer.
For this reason, local film production has dropped off to less than 50 movies a year from more than 100 a year less than a decade ago, said Hossain, who is also president of the Bangladesh Film Producers Association.
Despite small successes such as Biplab's arrest, the government's chief copyright enforcer said the current crackdown was unlikely to endanger the pirates' empire.
"Piracy has become increasingly sophisticated in terms of technology, marketing and operations," Manjurur Rahman, the government's chief copyright enforcer, told AFP.
"Isolated raids won't produce any lasting result. We have to make people realise that copyright is important, that piracy doesn't pay long term -- if not, ultimately, we won't have Bangla music, films and software anymore."
Neither of cancer-stricken pop icon Azam Khan's two children have followed him into the music business -- his son has opted for an office job that might, Khan says ruefully, pay more than being a pop star does in Bangladesh.
"It is a sad thing that pirates have made millions from my albums but I am reduced to begging for money for medical care," he told AFP before heading off for another round of chemotherapy, funded by donations.
By Shafiq Alam (AFP) 5 hours ago
DHAKA Bangladeshi pop icon Azam Khan has amassed legions of fans and dozens of hits over a 40-year career -- but he's always flat broke because of rampant music piracy.
When the 61-year-old star, revered for modernising the staid Bangla music scene in the 1970s, was diagnosed with mouth cancer this year he had to beg fans, including Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, to fund life-saving treatment.
"I've recorded 17 best-selling albums over my career but I have made less than 700,000 taka (10,000 dollars) in royalties," Khan told AFP from his sickbed in his modest two-bedroom house in the capital Dhaka.
"If I'd had this many hit albums in Europe, I'd own a private jet. In Bangladesh, rickshaw drivers will sometimes give me a free ride out of pity," he added.
Khan's experience is an extreme example of a broader global trend: demand for music is rising, but street piracy through counterfeit CDs and online piracy means profits for record companies and artists are being hit.
In Asia, street piracy is the major problem, which experts say is partly because options for consumers to buy or download music legally are limited. Apple's online iTunes store, for example, is still unavailable in most of the region.
This means that in markets like Bangladesh, where top music albums can sell millions of copies, consumers have little choice but to buy from music pirates.
"Sometimes it is literally impossible to buy legal copies of an album, the only thing available in the market is pirated disks," said Kumar Bishwajit, who heads the Music Industry Owners Association of Bangladesh.
As a result, intellectual property theft is a thriving billion-dollar industry in Bangladesh, and this has decimated the local music industry, said Nazmul Haq, owner of music firm G-Series.
Ten major Bangla-language recording companies, all long-established names, have folded in five years, and even major mobile phone companies routinely steal hit songs to use as ringtones without paying royalties, he said.
"If we have a hit album, we can make money only on the day of release. The next day bootleg disks are flooding markets, sold at a fraction of our price," he said.
Piracy is not limited to music: Bangladesh is also the Asian country with the highest software piracy rate, according to a list prepared by the Business Software Alliance (BSA) for 2009.
Globally, losses due to software piracy were more than 50 billion dollars in 2009, with some 16.5 billion of this in the Asia-Pacific region, the BSA said, adding that in Bangladesh some 91 percent of software used is pirated.
This is bad news for Bangladeshi software developers, said Mostafa Jappar, head of the Bangladeshi Computer Council, who copyrighted the first Bangla-language computer font in 1989.
"More than 10 million computers in Bangladesh use my font but less than one percent of these use original copies," he said, adding that piracy had cost him millions of dollars of lost revenue.
"It discourages entrepreneurs from developing more Bangla-language software and has cost the country tens of thousands of new jobs," he added.
Bangladesh is trying to crack down on pirates, passing a comprehensive anti-piracy law in 2000, updating it in 2005 with 10-year jail terms for pirates, and deploying the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) an elite police group.
In the 18 months to September this year, RAB teams conducted more than 500 raids, arresting 1,050 suspected copyright pirates, seizing more than two million disks and filing 375 cases, according to RAB statistics.
"It hasn't had a noticeable impact," said Major Masum Ahmed, head of the RAB's anti-piracy wing, adding that the vast majority of Bangladeshis do not realise buying fake goods is a crime.
The raids have focused on music, software and film, the worst-hit target of pirates. In March, Ahmed's team arrested the country's most notorious film pirate and extortionist, Biplab.
Biplab, who uses one name, would copy a film on the first day it was released then ring the producer, demanding large sums of cash in return for not selling the copy to the markets or to cable television networks.
"I don't know of any film producer in the country who has not received threats from Biplab. For the last three years, he held the whole movie industry hostage," said Motaleb Hossain, a director and a film producer.
For this reason, local film production has dropped off to less than 50 movies a year from more than 100 a year less than a decade ago, said Hossain, who is also president of the Bangladesh Film Producers Association.
Despite small successes such as Biplab's arrest, the government's chief copyright enforcer said the current crackdown was unlikely to endanger the pirates' empire.
"Piracy has become increasingly sophisticated in terms of technology, marketing and operations," Manjurur Rahman, the government's chief copyright enforcer, told AFP.
"Isolated raids won't produce any lasting result. We have to make people realise that copyright is important, that piracy doesn't pay long term -- if not, ultimately, we won't have Bangla music, films and software anymore."
Neither of cancer-stricken pop icon Azam Khan's two children have followed him into the music business -- his son has opted for an office job that might, Khan says ruefully, pay more than being a pop star does in Bangladesh.
"It is a sad thing that pirates have made millions from my albums but I am reduced to begging for money for medical care," he told AFP before heading off for another round of chemotherapy, funded by donations.
