Cambodia to crack down on pirated movies, music

Phnom Penh (dpa) - Cambodia would begin raids on shops suspected of selling pirated movie DVDs and music CDs, a senior official warned Monday.

The South-East Asian nation has become well-known among travellers for its thousands of shops offering dirt-cheap pirated copies of the latest international movies and music, which often hit the stalls before they are in general release overseas.

"The ministry will implement measures imminently to stop the sale of pirated CDs and DVDs to protect the intellectual property of their writers and producers," said Tauch Sarou, undersecretary of state for the Culture Ministry.

"But the ministry alone cannot stop this, so we will cooperate with police and the vendors themselves to stamp the problem out," Sarou said. "It isn't going to stop overnight, but we need the sellers to understand the issue and why we must do this. We will not stop until they do."

The ministry called a meeting of bootleg vendors Friday to warn them of the new crackdown, and police said Monday that they were prepared for the raids.

Cambodia's bootleggers enjoyed impunity for years, but the country was accepted as a member by the World Trade Organization in 2003 and the body has given it until 2013 to comply with regulations.

A vendor from Prey Nokor CD near the capital's Central Market said Monday that she understood intellectual property rights well but that sellers found themselves in a catch-22 situation.

On the one hand, nobody imports original work to Cambodia, and on the other, the 2-dollar-per-disk cost for pirated copies prices the genuine articles out of the market, said the vendor who declined to be named.

"However, I will stop if the law is enforced because I know artists have rights even though it will kill my business," she said.