Pirates shut down DVD store
THE remaining store in the Viewer’s Choice 2000 chain of DVD rental stores will close its doors for the last time next Friday evening – a business casualty of Jamaican consumers’ increasing demand for bootleg and pirated movies.
As a precursor to the closure, Viewer’s Choice’s once popular flagship store at 72B Hope Road, St Andrew is holding a clearance sale, with prices for movies beginning at $300 – which is as cheap as some bootlegs – and $500 for video games.
The Hope Road store had already been forced to downsize, moving from spacious premises upstairs to a crowded unit downstairs that housed its 5,000 titles.
The business, which offered a delivery service with customers able to order online, opened in 2000 at Manor Park Plaza and most recently had a concession inside Azmart in Barbican. Both closed previously.
Viewer’s Choice yesterday declined to comment when contacted by the Observer, but Melanie Graham, marketing director for movie theatre chain Palace Amusements, expressed her sympathies, despite being a competitor.
Palace, a member of the Jamaica Anti-Piracy Alliance (JAPA), which represents industries heavily affected by copyright violations, including music, software design and book publishing, had itself consistently complained about the cost to their business from piracy and bootlegging.
“It’s not a surprise to hear of things like this, and we’ve been talking about it for a long time,” said Graham. “Even though the police have been cracking down the pirates are still doing a flourishing trade, and it’s difficult to survive as a legit business with that kind of competition.”
Police have raided several large bootlegging operations here and have reported that sales were being used to fund organised crime.
Meanwhile, such is the growing public popularity of Internet piracy, even ‘experienced’ bootleggers are complaining privately.
Widening access to broadband Internet is enabling more persons to freely and illegally download music, DVDs and other copyright-protected digital content, which are often burnt onto CDs and DVDs and sold as bootlegs.