Pirated Goods

When it comes to copy right and intellectual property laws, Thailand is very lax in enforcement.  Whether you are looking for fake Rolex watches, knock off designer shirts, or pirated software or movies, they are easily available.  Although they are there for the finding in major malls and on the streets in the major tourist areas, it is actually against the law to sell them. 

As in the case with some other vices, law enforcement officials have an "incentive" to overlook these violations.  There is certainly logic to it.  The underpaid police officer is happy to supplement his below poverty level salary.  The merchant is happy because he can sell these items much cheaper than there normal price, and the tourist is happy because cheap movies, software, clothes and goods are, well, cheap.

Not everyone is happy however.  The United States has flagged Thailand on its watch list of countries that do not enforce intellectual property rights.  One of the big complaints that the U.S. has is that Thailand requires the mandatory licensing of some drugs.  Essentially this renders the patent worthless (or certainly diminished) and allows for the creation of cheap generics.  The Thai government argues that it is necessary to do this so that these potentially life saving drugs are available to its citizens, many of whom are extremely poor by Western standards, and do not have medical insurance to pay for high priced drugs.  Those opposing compulsory licensing would argue that but for the patent protection, these life saving drugs would not exist.  A company would not spend the millions of dollars necessary to develop a new drug if their competitors were able to copy their efforts. 

While Thailand has not budged on the compulsory licensing of drugs, the government announced that it would crack down on pirated goods.  Recently, the government raided the street stalls on Sukhumvit Road.  My understanding is that there was no warning given, and that the police arrived out of uniform and began stuffing the merchandise into garbage bags.  The vendors were furious, and there was a brief clash with police. 

The next day the government announced that it would end the crack down.  That was a good move, as the way it was done was not well thought out.  First, to do so out of uniform may have cause some vendors to think that these were thieves.  Secondly, they should have announced ahead of time that they were going to enforce the law.  These people selling the counterfeit goods are not wealthy shop owners making millions of dollars off of an other's intellectual property.  Many of them probably had a lot of their wealth tied up in the goods they were selling.  If they lost that, they would lose most everything.

If Thailand is serious about enforcing the intellectual property protection for counterfeit goods, they need to make sure that the vendors know that they are serious.  They should announce a date a month or so in the future on which they will begin enforcement.  That will give the merchants time to clear out any stock before the ban goes into effect. 

In truth, however, Thailand probably not serious about cracking down on this type of behavior.  Tourism is already down due to the world wide recession and the political instability, and eliminating cheap goods and movies will not help.  This type of crack down is exactly the kind of show that they like to put on here.  They can say "look at what we did", and in typical Thai fashion, they expect you to be polite enough not to point out that they really haven't changed at all.