James Delahunty
25 Feb 2005 14:19
When most people are asked to name places in the world where piracy is known to be most rampant, most people would say China as one of their first guesses, and they wouldn't be wrong. For years, counterfeit music CD's, books, DVDs etc.. have been selling in huge numbers on China and now Warner Home Video has decided to take a different approach to challenging it. Instead of pushing the Chinese government's hand to start war on pirates, they will compete with the pirates with reasonably priced DVDs.
These DVDs will be available very soon after their theatrical releases but will contain no extras like audio commentary or features on the making of the movie. The will sell for about 22 Yuan (US$2.65) which is not much more than 8 Yuan (US$1.80) which is the price the pirates offer. The quality of the DVDs offered by the pirates that early is often quite low (see Asian Silvers), and Warner believes that improved quality that consumers can rely on will help it defeat the DVD pirates.
Despite massive crackdowns on piracy in China and throughout Asia, piracy still remains rampant. If the most copyrighted works sold in any country were pirated, it wouldn't be strange for the general public to get used to it and see nothing wrong with it, especially since the pirates can offer much lower prices than the entertainment industry would be willing to offer for legitimate products. It is estimated that piracy in China alone costs Western companies about $16 billion annually in lost sales.
Source:
Forbes