Pirates have always had a soft spot for Mauritius. Robert Surcouf and Bailli de Suffren made a name for themselves during the French rule. More recently, tonnes of illegally caught Patagonian Toothfish transited in the harbour. Barely a kilometre away, in the vicinity of Rogers House, a new form of piracy was born a few years ago. Sales of illegally copied movies, music and software are now thriving across Mauritius.

Piracy is not a new problem but it has stepped up a gear in industrialised countries like Britain. The fast adoption of new technology, higher levels of computer literacy and the convergence of media and telecommunications have combined to create a nightmare scenario for record labels and music studios. Movies, films and software can not only be easily copied but also transferred and sold.

The British Video Association (BVA) revealed the extent of the problem in its latest report: illegal downloads of films and television programmes via the Internet have trebled over the past year, costing the UK video business Rs 2.3 billion in DVD sales alone. Business Software Alliance said copyright violations and software piracy cost the global IT sector Rs 390 billion last year alone. As for music studios, they have long been crusading against illegal downloads.

?The scale of the illegal use of music in the online environment is enormous. This ranges from the trade in recordable CDs containing counterfeit albums or mp3 compilations which is run from websites, chat rooms and online auctions to file sharing and downloading of music without the consent of the rights owners,? said a British Phonographic Institute spokesperson.

Illegal downloading is popular because it is fast, easy, cheap and the risk of getting caught is minimal. A closer look at the BVA report shows where the problem actually lies. The typical offender is reported as ?under 35 years old and male? and ?most likely to live in the south of England, where broadband is more widely available, and to download an average of 30 films or TV episodes per year?.

This is the download generation - the first to grow up with technology from the time they were infants and who feel it is their inalienable right to use it to their advantage. High speed Internet access has further enhanced their cause: bandwidth is increasing, prices are tumbling and coverage is widening. To make matters worse, the Internet can hardly be controlled. Research points out that on weekends, UK users alone had 200 million files available to download on peer-to-peer sites such as KaZaA.

Record companies, record labels, software companies and governments remain baffled by how to deal with the tide of illegal downloading. France has become the latest country to vow a crackdown of illegal file downloaders, saying the practice has been particularly damaging to music industry professionals. According to SNEP, a French national union of recording companies, company revenues in the first quarter of this year are already down 20 per cent on 2003 - which itself saw an annual drop in sales of 15 per cent.

<B>Fear of lawsuits</B>

Tougher anti-piracy laws, closer monitoring of certain websites and relentless pressure by the entertainment industry seems to be working. A study to be released this week will show 14 per cent of adult Internet users have stopped downloading music over the web because of fears they will be sued by record labels. A third of the former downloaders ? nearly six million ? say they stopped because of lawsuits filed by the recording industry.

However, 58 per cent of the survey?s respondents said that they do not care if the files they download are copyrighted. A report last year estimated that $700 million was lost in CD sales due to Peer-to-Peer piracy. Experts believe the problem may worsen because the next generation of systems offers superior connectivity, enhanced search facilities and even greater anonymity.

Inventors have been working overtime to find a solution to the problem. They have failed so far. The latest technology on the block was patented last week and is designed to frustrate illegal downloads by overwhelming pirated music files with hundreds of decoys containing white noise, low quality recordings or advertisements urging users to legally buy the song. Whether this one will work remains to be seen but the biggest hope lies at the steps of the online music stores that are now blossoming over the internet.

This unlikely success story began with the ever-innovative Apple launching the I-pod ? a digital jukebox weighing less than two CDs but that can hold up to 10 000 songs. The entry level version costs Rs 9000 and holds 3700 songs. The I-pod goes hand in hand with the iTunes music store which offers 700 000 tracks from major labels and independents. Downloading a track costs Rs 30.

The I-pod has been a resounding success. The device is being hailed as a ?classic? by the download generation. A million ipods were sold in the last three months alone. In its first year, iTunes sold more than 70 million songs. The popularity of the service has convinced others, such as Coca-Cola, Sony and MTV, to enter the market. Going legitimate on the Internet is finally becoming trendy.

The only remaining problem is that everyone is trying to impose his own format. The real-world model - that consumers are used to - is that you buy a CD or DVD from a store and it will play in any player, and the digital model needs to emulate that. And while everybody is trying to find a consensus, technology keeps evolving and it is getting easier to become a pirate.

Recorders using Hard Disk Drives have already hit the shops, allowing people to record hours of television programmes or videos. Costing Rs 30 000, they allow a hundred hours of recording without the need for any blank media. The price of DVD recorders have also tumbled, with the entry-level devices costing as little as Rs 7500.

Illegal downloads will become a hot issue in the next few years but it is still dwarfed by physical piracy which costs the entertainment industry ten times more. So don?t expect the crackdown on the illegal VCDs in Mauritius to stop just yet?

<B>by Ryan COOPAMAH</B> Outlook correspondent in London E-mail: [email protected]