Video Pirates of New ‘Star Wars’ Prove to Be Real Menace in Asia

People may be standing in line across America to see the latest “Star Wars” film. But here in Asia, where video piracy runs rampant, the George Lucas prequel “Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace” is now available on video discs in many markets for a fraction of the cost of a movie ticket--about $2.50.

With the speed of Han Solo’s Millennium Falcon and the destructiveness of the evil empire’s Death Star, the hard work and creative efforts of thousands of technicians, writers, actors, musicians and directors have been converted into profits for the criminal underworld that operates the video and music piracy industry here.

Hollywood will never see a penny of these gains.

The newest “Star Wars” movie debuted in the U.S. on May 19. Two days later, it showed up for sale on the streets of Malaysia as an illegal video disc. Earlier this week, the pirated version, complete with a Chinese-language jacket, surfaced in markets here in Hong Kong and Macao, a nearby Portuguese enclave.

Experts say it is only a matter of days before “Star Wars” video discs show up in the Chinese mainland, the world’s largest market and a voracious consumer of pirated U.S. films.

Sam Ho Wai-hung, a former Hong Kong policeman who heads Hong Kong anti-piracy efforts for the Motion Picture Assn. of America, estimated that at least four clandestine CD printing machines, each capable of producing 20,000 discs a day, are operating somewhere in the region to manufacture the “Star Wars” copies.

Ho said pirates operating in the U.S. first used a video camera inside a theater to capture the film. Then, within hours, judging from the hyper-speed the pirated version reached Asia, couriers boarded airplanes for Hong Kong and other Asian capitals. Once here, the digital video was converted by computer to the Video Compact Disc (VCD) format popular across Asia and the Indian subcontinent.

“The quality is bad because it was filmed in a theater,” Ho said. “At the beginning, the image is unstable. You can hear people shouting. Near the end you can see a human shadow.”

But the poor quality didn’t appear to deter customers from buying the two-disc bootleg copies.

At the Sim City computer market in the bustling Kowloon neighborhood of Mong Kok on Thursday afternoon, seven basement-level shops openly sold the film, as well as other recent U.S. movies, including the popular sci-fi thriller “Matrix.”

“We’ve sold a lot--hundreds,” said one shopkeeper. Lookouts posted at the entrance to the market stood ready to warn the shops if police or customs agents approached. Upstairs, other shops sold pirated versions of the “Star Wars” CD-ROM video game, as well as pirated versions of nearly everything Microsoft produces.

The Hong Kong government, spurred on by local film and music stars who complain that piracy has destroyed their once-vibrant industry, has recently begun a series of hard-hitting television and print media campaigns against piracy.

But officials admit that so far they have had little success controlling the pirates, who appear to operate here with impunity.

“These shops are scattered all over the territory,” said Vincent Poon Yeung-kwong, assistant customs commissioner for control of intellectual property. “We are constantly monitoring known black spots. When we find them, we raid them. But there are just too many shops in Hong Kong.”

Working undercover with a team of anti-piracy agents, Ho said he found 27 shops in two large Hong Kong computer markets selling the pirated version of “Phantom Menace.” The film is not scheduled to be shown in Hong Kong until July.

Ho said he anticipated the inevitable piracy of the film, especially after all the fanfare it received in the U.S. But the speed of the operation, and the fact that it’s fully subtitled in Chinese, surprised him.

“We knew these people were capable of producing a pirated version in a week,” Ho said. “But they were showing up in Malaysia after only three days.”

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