Back off Bollywood, KL's pirates told

Back off Bollywood, KL's pirates told

Agence-France Presse, Kuala Lumpur

India on Tuesday called for tougher action against the makers of pirated discs in Malaysia, where Bollywood movies and Indian music are popular among the multi-ethnic population.

"I think (piracy) is to a great extent rampant here," India's visiting Minister of State for Commerce and Industry Satyabarata Mokherjee told reporters.

"We need to take more stringent steps so that it can stop. Groups who indulge in this illegality should be curbed," he said.

Malaysia, like many parts of Asia, is awash with pirated discs and new movies are sometimes sold on the streets even before they hit the big screen, sometimes for as little as US$1.

After conducting a nationwide blitz on piracy this year, the government announced it would impose price controls on locally- made original discs from January but the local film and music fraternity warned the move could backfire and kill the industry.

For its part, the United States said the price cutting could prompt producers to shun the country.

Market forces would compel producers based in the U.S., which owns 70 percent of disc copyrights, to shift to more lucrative markets, a U.S. official warned earlier this year, adding that the US suffered losses of about $242 million to piracy in Malaysia in 2002.

Mokherjee was in Malaysia for the opening of a trade exhibition aimed at boosting India's exports.