Kerry Rea (Bonner, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Home Affairs. Will the minister inform the House about the latest information linking DVD piracy to organised crime?

Bob Debus (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Home Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bonner for that question. Many members of the public have probably bought or received a pirated DVD at some stage—perhaps some members of this House have done so—and not given too much thought to the criminal aspect of it, because most people think of it as a victimless crime. But it is becoming increasingly clear that that is far from the case. Organised crime is moving into this type of activity because of the enormous profits that can be made. A blank disk and some packaging costs, maybe, 20c, 25c. The average price of a DVD that has been pirated is $10. That is over a 1,000 per cent profit. Australian police intelligence is increasingly finding that the same people who are involved in serious crimes, such as the distribution of child pornography, drug trafficking and money laundering, are now heavily involved in what has become an explosion in the production of pirated DVDs. Interpol is giving similar indications on an international trend in that direction.

A report prepared for the recent national police ministers’ conference estimated the cost to industry in Australia of pirated DVDs is around $1.7 billion. That report said that piracy would become more prevalent and more attractive to organised crime as criminals increasingly learn that intellectual property crime offers that very high financial return from a low investment and that because, at least in the past, there has also been a rather low risk of law enforcement attention or detection. State police are now doing a lot of good work in this area. Raids this year on pirating operations have uncovered illegal weapons, drugs and child pornography in addition to the DVDs. There was a significant raid of that nature in Sydney only yesterday. The state and territory police will increasingly encounter this type of crime, and if strong action is taken with enforcement then of course its attractiveness will be reduced.

I should mention that the Australian Federal Police have appointed an intellectual property officer to build partnerships across the Asia-Pacific region and in June actually hosted a workshop for that purpose in Bangkok. The Australian government is also seeking intellectual property enforcement and cooperation with other countries through international forums such as APEC and in our free trade negotiations. In February the Minister for Trade announced that Australia would participate in negotiations for multilateral anticounterfeiting trade agreements.

The Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft is an organisation which protects the interests of 50,000 people who work in the film and television industry. They have been working with police to raise awareness of this growing involvement of organised crime. In the 12 months to October this year the Federation Against Copyright Theft assisted police in seizing close to one million DVDs and 741 DVD burners. These are pieces of equipment that you can keep in the backyard, and those 741 burners have the capacity to produce 18 million DVDs in a year. So it is clear that DVD piracy is not at all a victimless crime, and I do urge the public to stop and think where their money might really be going next time they pay 10 bucks for a cheap DVD.