On Genova Street in downtown Mexico City, illegally copied CDs of music by top U.S. artists sell for 20 pesos, just under $2 a piece, in tiny booths between tables overflowing with batteries, stuffed animals and cheap knockoff sunglasses. That’s about one-tenth the price in nearby stores.
Music is even cheaper a few hundred yards away, inside the Internet cafes surrounding the pedestrian plaza of the Glorieta Insurgentes. At eMil-ios, about 20 customers a day fill virgin discs with illegally downloaded songs for about $1.60, according to the clerk, Luis Arturo Guerrero, and whether or not they pay legitimate Internet sites for the tunes is not his concern.
“We can’t really be responsible for what people see or download,” says Guerrero, who sells blank CD-Rs for 8 pesos, or about 70 cents, and charges 9 pesos, about 80 cents, for an hour of computer time. Most use the free file-sharing programs Limewire or Morpheus, he said.
Unauthorized downloads are a global challenge for the music industry, but the problem is becoming particularly serious in Mexico, where intellectual property laws don’t punish file-sharing and an increasing number of people are getting the broadband Internet connections that make it easier to download content at high speeds.
Mexico today is a pirate’s haven: In a nation where the government has made opening legitimate businesses bureaucratic and costly, consumers have learned to count on “ambulantes”, street vendors like the crowd on Genova Street, for everything from contraband cigarettes to DVDs of just-released Holly-wood movies to high-end electronics.
Illegal sales already account for 65 percent of CD sales in Mexico, and the entertainment industry is bracing for things to get much worse now that fast broadband connections have become more common, doubling to 61 percent of Web-enabled Mexicans in the last two years.
“Broadband makes it easier for people to trade musical files and to download recorded music, both legally and illegally,” said Arturo Diaz, legal director of the Mexican Association of Music.
The Nassau Guardian
