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While the Middle East media and broadcast industries continue to struggle under alarming rates of piracy, a number of initiatives led by international trade and commerce groups are beginning to yield results in the region.

One of the biggest challenges facing the ongoing development of content delivery services in the Middle East is piracy. The pay TV sector is perhaps the highest profile victim in this respect, suffering millions of dollars in lost revenues as a result of the spread of hacked access cards and illegal decoders.

In Egypt, where pirated pay TV signals outnumber legal transmissions by three to one, a religious scholar has even appeared on TV commercials reminding the majority that pirating broadcast signals is forbidden by Islamic law.

The problem spreads further creating some indirect challenges for the industry. Investments in content are undermined by pirated movies, TV shows and music, which are widely available as hard-copy counterfeits and via a number of online sources.

Rotana's head of digital entertainment, Yousef Mugharbil, recently made the remarkable claim that his company loses one dollar for every dollar it makes due to piracy.

The situation may be bad but the region and indeed the industry, is not alone in suffering at the hands of counterfeiters.

In February, the UAE hosted the fourth Global Conference to Combat Counterfeiting and Piracy. After the event, which attracted representatives from Interpol, the World Customs Organisation and the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), 25 recommendations were handed down in a document grandly named ‘The Dubai Declaration'.

These recommendations called for increased awareness in free trade zones of the exploitation they are open to from counterfeiters, the raising of public and political awareness and improved co-operation between businesses, governments and enforcement authorities.

While the scope of the Global Congress was broad, the entertainment and media industry was well represented.

David Benjamin, senior vice president of Universal Music and co-chair of the International Chamber of Commerce's BASCAP initiative (Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy), argued that a coordinated assault was required to counteract the challenge of piracy.

"Corporate responsibility does not just refer to shareholders, but to all entities involved in delivering goods to the marketplace. In a global, digitised world, the cooperation and good faith of all parties is essential," Benjamin told the conference in February.

"In its simplest form, counterfeiting and piracy are driven by high profits and low risk - both of which are traditionally remedied with sound legal structures and enforcement.

"Policy makers must make intellectual property (IP) enforcement a priority. They must put in place strong laws and penalties to curb IP theft."

BASCAP is well-supported globally, counting amongst its members Sony, Microsoft and Vivendi.

Last month, the UAE Ministry of Economy repeated an instruction to port authorities to confiscate all illegal pay TV decoders entering the country. Emirati law explicitly states that illegally decrypting pay TV channels is forbidden.

Remarkably, many other GCC countries are yet to follow this legal assertion.

Other industries impacted by piracy are starting to take action with many achieving favourable results. In May, Microsoft worked with local authorities in Qatar and the UAE to raid resellers who had been dealing in counterfeit software.

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