By Douglas Birch
Baltimore Sun
Dec. 28, 2002
MOSCOW - Haunted by pirates and bootleggers, stacked with tempting contraband,
the Gorbushka Market in west Moscow is an Aladdin's cave for movie and music
fans. For copyright lawyers, it is a chamber of horrors.
It almost doesn't matter what you're searching for, a CD by Snoop Dogg, an LP
by Dave Brubeck, Tarzan and the Leopard Woman dubbed into Russian or a videocassette
of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Or the latest PlayStation game.
If it has been recorded anywhere on almost anything, there is a good chance it can be found among the 1,800 kiosks jammed in the market, housed in the cavernous buildings of the former Gorbunov aviation factory. There's an even better chance that whatever you find is what Russians call "piratsvo," a copy mass produced by some shady outfit and sold without the original creators sharing a kopek in royalties.
Gorbushka (meaning "bread crust") might be the largest market for pirated music and films in Eastern Europe. Every day, 30,000 people hunt along its narrow aisles. Merchants are gearing up for the approaching New Year's holiday, when Russians traditionally exchange gifts.
Gorbushka is a monument to the entrepreneurial spirit of the Russian people and is a good example of Russia's stubborn resistance to playing the capitalist game by the West's sometimes-annoying rules.
According to the Business Software Alliance, a trade group based in the United States, about 90 percent of the commercial computer programs used in Russia are bootlegged. That means Russia is second only to China in the use of stolen business programs.
The group estimates that sales at Gorbushka and other pirate outlets cost the software giant Microsoft more than $900 million a year.
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry likewise says that two out of three CDs in Russia are counterfeit. And outlaw copies outsell legal ones 4-1.
At Gorbushka, one trader said, illegal DVDs outsell legal ones 100-1, and the reasons are simple to find. In the West, legal DVDs can cost $15 to $20. At Gorbushka, DVDs of recent films sell for $8. A legal edition of the Microsoft Windows operating system might cost $90. Here, it's $2. Despite pressure from the West for authorities to crack down on the piracy, there is little evidence of reform. In August, U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow sent a letter to the Russian government alleging that some military factories were churning out pirated CDs and videos.
Merchants at Gorbushka cheerfully estimate that 75 to 90 percent of what is sold in the market is pirated.
"And that percentage is increasing," said Vyacheslav Treibutsky, an entrepreneur in his 20s. "Because a lot of people can't afford to pay that much for the licensed products."
Treibutsky, who has a stall in the market, didn't want to identify the source of his merchandise. But nearby kiosks sell knockoffs of everything from a Harry Potter computer game to pornographic films that play on computers. All are cheap.
Several times a week, stall owners say, copyright enforcement agents of the Ministry of the Interior stop by to check merchandise. Sometimes the agents confiscate suspected pirated material for "testing." But traders say the inspections are an annoyance more than anything else.
Such items always find their way back to the market, one merchant said. Often, all it takes to retrieve seized contraband is a small payment to the right official.
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