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Stella Lee

Copyright pirates are resorting to cheaper, portable machinery to make compact discs after legal changes turned up the heat on large-scale operations.

Custom officers said the pirates were increasingly using portable CD-Rom writers to copy discs since enactment of the Prevention of Copyright Piracy Ordinance, which requires registration and inspection of disc factories.

Assistant Commissioner of Customs and Excise Poon Yeung-kwong said CD-Rom writers cost between $1,000 and $2,000, compared to the several million dollars for setting up a traditional disc-making operation.

Production is slower than with larger machines - which can turn out 30,000 copies a day - but Mr Poon said a writer could be easily hidden and operated in a flat.

'We've found three to four such cases using the new method recently,' he said. 'It needs about 15 minutes to download. About 1,200 discs can be duplicated if 30 CD-Rom writers operate for 10 hours, or more if they are run round-the-clock.'

Two factories had their licences revoked after they were found to have infringed the ordinance, enacted in March 1998 to allow Customs officers to inspect registered plants.

Mr Poon said the new copying method made inspection difficult but officers could still track down manufacturers by monitoring the outlets where pirated discs were sold.

Teenagers were increasingly being hired to sell discs on the street, Mr Poon said, and this trend was reflected in the higher number of juveniles arrested for copyright offences, especially during the summer holiday.

Forty-four people aged under 16 were arrested for piracy offences in the second half of last year, but in the first eight months of this year the figure jumped to 104. Of these, 55 were caught between June and August.

About one-third of people convicted under copyright laws were jailed in 1998, but the number rose to 54 per cent last year and 60 per cent in the first half of this year. The number of underground retail outlets has dropped from more than 1,000 to about 100 after the establishment of a 185-strong taskforce in June last year.

Mr Poon said the remaining 100 retail outlets survived by constantly changing their operating methods, sometimes selling by mail or even in fitting rooms of boutiques.

He said officers were also monitoring piracy over the Internet. Only about 10 of the main 300 Web sites linked to piracy were based in Hong Kong, making investigation difficult.



CD cheats change tactics after crackdown on large-scale operations