- Russia is high on the entertainment industry's Hate Lists when it comes to what it labels "Music disc piracy".
It's one of ten countries which, "in IFPI's view," are failing to "protect and enforce intellectual property rights and tackle unacceptable levels of piracy".
The other countries are: Brazil, China, Mexico, Pakistan, Paraguay, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand and Ukraine.
Piracy is also "notorious in Russia," says Mosnews.
Read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Russian Consumers Choose Pirates Over Copyright By Maria Antonova - MosNews
Gorbushka is a legendary place on Moscow’s music scene. Back in the 1970s people started gathering next to the Gorbunov House of Culture to trade records, meet other music lovers, and encourage the development of a Soviet rock culture.
Every weekend you could walk among the random assembly of vendors and collectors that was affectionately nicknamed Gorbushka. Back then this haphazard market was frowned upon by the authorities who considered western music unhealthy for the communist spirit.
Much has changed since then, but much has stayed the same. Although western bands are no longer forbidden, what goes on inside Gorbushka is still controversial, because many vendors sell pirated music.
The piracy issue is notorious in Russia, and nothing illustrates it better than Gorbushka, which moved to a more organized and civilized location in 2001. The music, video, and computer program vendors now occupy the second floor of the former Rubin television factory, a spacious renovated building. In the courtyard, a man sweeps autumn leaves into neat piles to the sounds of Kenny G-type music.
It strikes me as being anything but illegal, as I go inside past several security guards. Upstairs my eye immediately catches large posters with anti-piracy slogans: 'Listen up, you pirate, I choose copyright!'; 'When you buy from the pirates, you rob yourself!'; 'Stop imitation, down with the fakes!'; 'Your days are numbered, pirate!' and so on.
I follow the crowd and stop at one of the booths where CDs are displayed in compact rows. Most albums, both Russian and foreign, are priced at 100 rubles, about $3.50.
Unfazed by the slogans suspended directly above them, the vendors seem to disregard them at best, mock them at worst. One young man sells MP3 CDs with as many as 5 albums and a total of 100 songs on one disk, for the modest price of 150 rubles. What is the significance of Gorbushka’s anti-piracy display, I ask him. 'Oh, it’s been here for a couple of years. I don’t think it’s working,' he says with a little smile.
Most of the pavilions that sell licensed albums (for around 400 rubles) are empty. A woman behind one of these counters says: 'Yes, I know that some of the sellers are here with burned CDs. But they have to earn a living too, I can understand them.'
This turns out to be the main vibe among other people I talk to: everyone has to eat, consumers don’t want to spend 15 dollars on one album, so piracy is a comfortable profession that keeps everyone happy. In the meantime, the black music market produces 75 percent of all the CDs sold in Russia and annually pockets one billion euros that legally belong to the copyright owners.
Pirates range from barons to amateurs. The barons take over entire factories, buying dilapidated Soviet industrial sites and mass-producing, or rather, mass-copying music, films, and computer programs. On rare occasions they get caught, such as last April, when the police confiscated 400,000 pirated CDs and equipment for copying and packaging at the Moscow plant Saturn.
But the amateurs prove to be more elusive. A friend of mine occasionally translates Serbian films into Russian for one of the countless distributors that line Gorbushka. 'Most of them have a mini-workshop at home. They buy clean CDs, a good computer, a printer, hire translators and find a place to sell the produce. It’s not rocket science,' she says. Getting rid of one simply breeds others.
If it’s hard to eliminate the nebulous pirates, it’s even harder to convince people to buy certified albums. 'The prices are ridiculously high,' says Tanya, 21. 'I only buy pirate CDs, and so does everyone else. If you buy a licensed copy, you are either an idiot, or a snob. Or you are getting it as a gift for a very important person, since it has more attractive packaging.'
Her views are echoed by Dima, 25: 'Almost all of my CDs are pirated. I also tried downloading from the web, but do it very little, because I don’t want to pay for internet traffic. I think in Russia piracy is not such a bad thing, since it compensates for our low incomes. At least it becomes possible for people to educate themselves about computer programs, for example.'
In a country where the average monthly salary is about $240, buying the latest album for $15 is a grotesque luxury, let alone spending $600 on Adobe Photoshop or a similar computer program.
Last November, the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Alexander Vershbow, wrote in an article for The Moscow Times: 'The technology sector [in Russia] is a victim of the pirates, who deprive innovators of the funding they need to keep innovating.'
His is a typical argument that elaborates on one of the Gorbushka slogans: 'Buying from the pirates, you are robbing yourselves.' But is this knowledge enough to steer consumers onto the righteous path and away from bootleggers? Not likely.
'I don’t see a personal benefit in helping develop the Russian IT industry,' Dima says. 'It’s honorable to support domestic business, but the whole system has to be changed in order for an average Russian to afford something other than pirated copies.'
Russia wants to be on a par with Europe and the U.S., and piracy is one of the issues that damages its reputation and plagues its World Trade Organization accession talks. The authorities conduct a few token piracy-fighting campaigns, disrupting forgery rings and enforcing stricter control of retailers. Overall, though, the piracy situation in Russia resembles Gorbushka: the obvious campaign against piracy coexists with persistent bootlegging, big and small.
Meanwhile, consumers will continue to take their money to pirates, or maybe even look for more advanced ways to acquire their favorite songs and movies. 'I just bring a hard drive and download everything from the server at my dorm,' says Vassilii, 22.
Who knows, eventually Russia might become advanced enough to deliver its own version of Napster or Kazaa, adhering to the piracy canons of more developed countries.
