In Mexico, music piracy rising with broadband

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The global music industry has had some success in fighting illegal file-sharing on sites like Kazaa and Grokster. The global rate of Internet piracy has tapered off as people react to high-profile lawsuits and the risk of getting viruses from exposing their hard drives to peer-to-peer networks, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents the recording industry against piracy worldwide.

Countries like Mexico, where broadband is just taking hold and consumers are accustomed to buying contraband CDs, are a particular challenge.

568 million songs per year pirated
According to the IFPI, with a pirate market valued at $111 million in 2004, Mexico is now within the top ten countries for music piracy. The major labels say Mexican computer users download about 568 million songs per year.

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The movie industry already lost about $483 million to counterfeit sales in Mexico in 2005, according to the Motion Picture Association of America, and while film downloads remain frustratingly slow at broadband speeds, all it takes is one very fast Internet connection and a rack of DVD burners for a pirate to make many contraband copies of the latest blockbuster.

These losses have a multi-faceted impact on Mexico's artists as well, according to Raul Vazquez, IFPI's Latin America director: local music industry jobs disappear, tax revenues don't arrive, and legitimate Mexican music sites like Beon and Tarabu have little chance to develop in competition with free illegal downloads. Musicians with record deals lose money on sales, and emerging local musicians miss out because record companies can't afford to develop and market them, opting instead to sell big international names.

‘The local musical culture disappears’
“The market keeps shrinking,” he said. “The local musical culture disappears because you're not recording local artists.”

Recording companies pursued 20,000 lawsuits in 17 countries last year against illegal fire-sharing, but not a single one was filed in Mexico.

“The laws in Mexico are weak and they haven't been updated to take into account online trade,” Vazquez said.

Even if the laws do change, finding offenders won't be easy. At Internet cafes, where one-third of Mexico's Internet users go online, several people may use the same computer every hour.

Valdez thinks education is the answer, teaching Mexicans see piracy as a crime. It's a message driven home in Mexican-oriented public service announcements that seemingly precede every rental movie.

But changing the culture of piracy will take time. At the Centro de Communicaciones, which offers rows of Web-enabled computers just a few storefronts away from eMilios, clerk Alan Sanchez Navarro said the many customers downloading free music weren't putting the store at risk, or even doing anything wrong.

“It's legal for you to download music,” he said. “It doesn't affect us.”

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