Over a dozen business executives, including Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, Vivendi Universal's Jean-Rene Fourtou and GlaxoSmithKline's Andrew Witty have joined forces to fight piracy in all markets, not just the software sector. Items from DVDs to medicines, toys to car parts, are the focus of this new business alliance. Counterfeit goods are costing companies more than $600 billion and the growth of this market is posing a threat to economic development, experts say.
The alliance is called BASCAP (Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy) and is run by the International Chamber of Commerce. Eric Nicoli, chairman of EMI Group said "Piracy remains a real problem for virtually every sector in every country in the world. In the past five years, technology has changed so much that it is now possible to replicate perfectly pretty much any product anywhere in the world".
View: BASCAP Website
View: ICC Website