Piracy affects 95% of Moroccan music products
Morocco, Economics, 6/2/2005

95% of Moroccan music products are affected by piracy, revealed Wednesday a magazine aired by national TV "TVM."

"Echoeco" said 95% of audio and compact disc music products, notably popular music, is found in the black market. This is alarming and has negative repercussions on artists' situation and creation, said the magazine.

Organized groups exploit new technologies of information and communication (Internet, CD-RewritersÉ) to manufacture and illicitly distribute audio cassettes, CDs, video tapes and VCDs with a capacity production of nearly 400,000 cassettes and 600,000 CDs a week. Losses resulting from pirating and counterfeiting CDs and cassettes are estimated at around MAD 200 million (about USD 23.5 Mn).

Finger pointing street vendors who sell these products at a large scale, CD, VCD and audiocassettes distributors say

they suffer from this unfair competitiveness that dumps the market with cheap low quality products.

For their part, artists deplored their financial situation and called for setting up an adequate judicial arsenal, developing the Intellectual Property Rights and controlling distribution process.

In Casablanca, Derb Ghellaf market, whose notoriousness goes beyond Moroccan borders, offers a varied set of items from CDs to cards for deciphering the coded signals of paid satellite TV channels passing through computer programs. Prices are attractive: VCD player (MAD 350), VCD (MAD 4-5) and DVD (MAD 10).

Pirated VCDs and DVDs affect Moroccan cinema as well, as cinemagoers declined to 6 million in 2005 compared to 20 million in the 90's, with a filling capacity that hardly reaches 35%.

Computer programs and clothes are also under fire. Piracy is a problem that takes massive proportions, as it weakens trade and investment, deprives creators from the fruits of their work, deprives government from tax and undermines the image of Morocco at the international scale, said the magazine.

Piracy costs Morocco MAD 2 billion of economic losses with an average rate of over 70pc in the sectors of software, music and cinema, according to the Communication Ministry and Le Bureau Marocain du Droit d'Auteur (Moroccan Office for Authors' Rights).

The North African country has made of the crackdown on piracy one of its priorities for 2005 because of the economic and moral damages it causes.

Previous Stories:
  Morocco needs to firmly counter piracy, Minister   (4/6/2005)
  Piracy costs Morocco around $ 253 Mn   (3/24/2005)
  Moroccan cinemagoers declined to 6 millions in 2005   (3/24/2005)

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