SINGAPORE - Here's a shocking statistic you may not have known: Almost one in two netizens here visits websites which illegally host music and movies, among other files, for free downloading.
This is according to estimates revealed to my paper last month by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).
It estimated that between 45 and 50 per cent of Internet users in Singapore accessed unlicensed sites earlier this year.
IFPI is a Swiss-based global trade organisation representing over 1,000 producers and distributors of sound recordings.
The Digital Music Report 2012, released by IFPI in January, showed that the worldwide average for Internet users who accessed unauthorised services on a monthly basis was about 28 per cent.
These figures come at a time when Singapore aims to become an intellectual-property (IP) hub in Asia.
In March, Law and Foreign Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam revealed in Parliament that an inter-agency working group was set up last year to look into copyright issues.
He added that Singapore had an average of about 300,000 incidences of illegal downloading a month, based on data from rights holders - one of the highest incidences of online digital piracy in the Asia-Pacific region.
Music sales here have taken a beating in recent years. Compared to 2010, the physical and digital sale of music in Singapore fell by close to 23 per cent last year, said IFPI.
Noting the downward trend in music sales over the past five years, IFPI's Asia regional director, Ms Leong May Seey, said the decline could be due to a "high level of digital-music piracy" and the "lack of sustainable licensed digital-music platforms".
Several brick-and-mortar music shops have been hit by the drop in sales of physical copies of music albums.
Retailers such as United States music giant Tower Records and home-grown Sembawang Music shut their doors for good here in 2006 and 2009, respectively, due to declining sales.
Ms Emily Butt, managing director of HMV Singapore and Hong Kong, told my paper that the dip was only to be expected, as "many kids today have never even purchased a CD, nor do they own a player".
But that does not mean digital sales are faring well, either. In Singapore, legal digital- music sales dropped last year to US$5.3 million (S$6.6 million) from 2010's US$7.7 million. Digital sales also accounted for only 26 per cent of the total music market, which was lower as compared to other countries in the region.
The figure last year was 38 per cent for Malaysia, 60 per cent for Thailand and 54 per cent for South Korea.
Mr James Kang, Warner Music's marketing director, pointed out that the crux of the problem lies in the lack of an "efficient service" here for consumers to subscribe to.
This problem is not unique to Singapore.
Every territory without services, such as Apple's iTunes online music store, suffers from extremely high piracy rates, said Mr Kang.
Some legal digital-music services have cropped up here over the past years, but several have struggled to stay afloat.
Sony Ericsson's PlayNow Plus and Nokia's Ovi Music Unlimited folded in 2010.
Those that remain include ones by the three telcos as well as OBuddy.asia, by home-grown label Ocean Butterflies Music.
Lawyers said that having tougher laws in place is not the issue when it comes to piracy here.
"Singapore has (among) the toughest laws protecting intellectual-property rights in the world. So, it is not a question of making our laws tougher," said Mr Daniel Lim, director of intellectual property and technology at Stamford Law.
Instead, the problem could lie in enforcement. Said Mr Samuel Seow, managing director of Samuel Seow Law Corporation: "No matter how tough the law gets, if there is inadequate enforcement, the same problems will arise."
In a bid to get the public to respect creative rights, the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore has embarked on a slew of educational campaigns, such as the recently concluded The Originals IP Spectacular!
But such efforts are not enough. Said lawyer Jonathan Kok, a partner at RHTLaw Taylor Wessing: "If you educate the public without providing a viable economical alternative, they will continue to engage in illegal downloads or purchase bootleg copies."
