Companies drawn from diverse sectors such as movies, music, software and pharmaceutical industries came together under a single umbrella to combat piracy. The music company EMI, pharmaceutical major GlaxoSmithKline, French media giant Vivendi Universal and software giant Microsoft are some of the renowned companies that are up in arms against counterfeiters.
A body called Bascap (Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy) came out with its agenda at EMI’s London office. They also exhorted their other counterparts to join them in this initiative to weed out piracy. According to Eric Nicoli, chairman of EMI Group and co-chairman of Bascap, "Piracy remains a real problem for virtually every sector in every country in the world". He also added that counterfeit pharmaceutical, auto parts and food products could cost lives.
It is reported that counterfeiters make a whopping ₤340 billion ($600bn). The executives averred that such a huge sum could affect the economic development of both rich and the poor countries.
Bascap’s objectives include explaining to the common man as to how fake goods are detrimental to progress and respect and aiding the enforcement of intellectual property rights.
Their proposal includes compilation of case studies on piracy, to build a body which will devise the best strategies to combat piracy and also making popular piracy league tables that will identify counterfeiting “hotspots” all over the world which will then be named and disgraced.
The honchos also stated that counterfeiting is intertwined with crime such as drug trafficking, credit card fraud to name a few.
Posted
on : Wed, 05 Oct 2005 12:00 GMT | Business News
By : Chris Rowe
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