I SHOULD like to respond to the letter headlined, 'A blind eye on software pirates', by Mr Kelvin Tam (South China Morning Post, August 30).
Mr Tam had the impression that this department had double standards in raiding pirated computer software and copyright-infringing CDs.
It seemed to him that this department had exerted less enforcement action against pirated computer software, because the trade gained 'a degree of pseudo-respectability' by operating in shopping centres, than on infringing CDs peddled on street corners.
The difference in the way these two types of illegal products are sold may well lead to this impression, although our enforcement efforts are applied fairly evenly to both types of illegal sales.
Whereas infringing CDs are openly sold by street-hawkers, pirated computer software is not openly displayed for sale in the shopping arcades where it is sold, copies being made on the spot for customers only when a deal is reached. Advertisements displayed in the arcades do not break the law, and it is in practice much more difficult to prove the commission of an offence.
Nonetheless, operations are mounted against such pirated computer software vending by undercover officers of this department posing as customers, although such operations are limited, by their nature, to smaller numbers of such instantly produced illegal software items seized, than is possible when raiding whole cartloads of copyright-infringing CDs on open display for sale. The effort exerted by our officers is, as I have said, is fairly evenly balanced in taking enforcement action against both pirated computer software and copyright-infringing CDs, but the yield in terms of the quantity and value of goods seized per operation is much higher in the case of the CDs, because of the blatant and open way in which they are displayed for sale.
