Now this is interesting. Companies from the music, film, software and, wait for it, the pharmaceuticals industries met at the UK headquarters of EMI yesterday to launch a new cross-industry body to tackle piracy issues. With the catchy name of the Business Action To Stop Counterfeiting And Piracy Group, or Bascap for short, founding members of the group include EMI, Vivendi Universal and drugs firm GlaxoSmithKline. They hope to pool knowledge on the most successful strategies for combating piracy, and to name and shame counterfeiting "hotspots" around the world.
EMI boss Eric Nicoli, who will be co-chairman of Bascap, said the disparate group of executives had come together to tackle this issue because rapid developments in technology meant that "it is now possible to replicate pretty much every product pretty much as accurately as possible".
Confirming that the new group plans to name and shame countries and cities which harbour counterfeiters, Bob Wright of NBC Universal added: "A lot of countries are afflicted with the [piracy] problem. No country wants to known as a pirate location. No businessman wants to be in a city or country known as a piracy capital. Even good businesses can be taken down if they operate in an area known as a piracy location."
Meanwhile Martin Wassell of the International Chamber Of Commerce, which will act as a parent organisation to the new anti-piracy group, said that strategically the new body would concentrate more on making sure existing anti-piracy laws were enforced rather than lobbying for new legislation: "Our principle task will be raising awareness of governments and law enforcement authorities to the size of the problem".