This practice, known to be rampant in Malta, will bleed the industry to bankruptcy if nothing drastic is done to prevent it, Mr Borg emphasised. Asked whether the association had any statistics as to the amount of pirate material circulating in the local market, Mr Borg said that is was hard to quantify such figures, but gave the low sales registered with the recent DVD release of The Passion of the Christ as an example.
Before DVD dubbing started in recent years, some 2,000 copies of blockbusters such as Titanic would be sold, Mr Borg explained. The Passion of the Christ sold barely 300 copies, even though the film was particularly attractive to Malta’s predominantly Catholic viewers.
Over the past year, some 14,000 fake DVDs and Playstation games have been seized from the local market, along with another 8,000 items which were discovered by Customs officers in Malta and at Heathrow. Despite this relative success, however, when offenders are prosecuted they rarely get much more than a Lm200 fine, he complained, although there has been a recent case where a man was given a three-year suspended sentence for selling copyrighted DVDs. “A Lm200 fine is a pittance, which is why the association will now be filing its own suits in the civil courts demanding retribution for the damage incurred,” he said
Asked by The Malta Independ-ent why the association had not taken such action before, Mr Borg explained that they were waiting for the go-ahead from the international Motion Picture Association, to which they are affiliated. The MPA had restrained the AACT from taking such action mainly because they did not want to expose themselves too much, he added. However now the situation is getting out of hand.
The financial aspect was another factor, he said, adding that the association already invests a considerable amount of money in its investigations, which are then handed over to the police.
“The police give their full cooperation,” Mr Borg emphasised, “but we understand that they do not have the resources to follow up all the cases.”
The association’s legal advisor, Dr Patrick Galea, pointed out that there was an EU law to this effect.
It stipulates that by 2006 all member states must comply with a minimal enforcement infrastructure outlined by the law itself. Regarding the relatively mild treatment given to copyright fraudsters, Dr Galea also pointed out that although the law provided for the suspension of the trading licence, in the event of a street hawker or shop-owner being caught selling copied material, this is rarely implemented.
Asked whether customers were liable for legal action in the event of them buying copyrighted material, Dr Galea said that the law does not recognise such a purchase as illegal and therefore policemen can do nothing about it.