Turkey
The campaign is made jointly in the names of both the PA and the Turkish Publishers Association, more specifically with their anti-piracy working group Edisam.
Over the past 15 months the campaign has resulted in:
- A total of 119 successful raids: 61 in Istanbul, 15 in Ankara, 43 in other cities.
- 228 court cases have been opened since 2002.
- 72 additional raids aimed solely at the copy shops that copy academic textbooks on or around university campuses. Thousands of copies of Turkish & English academic titles have been seized with 50 photocopy machines confiscated and 48 court cases opened.
A key part of the strategy for Turkey has been to use the EU accession bid as a means of pressure on the local authorities to set their house in order with regard to IPR. The Accession Partnership Document is a list of ‘must dos’ that Turkey must complete before full membership to the EU is granted. Vigorous lobbying by the PA in Brussels has resulted not only in IPR enforcement being highlighted but our industry being given special mention. The relevant section reads:
Evidence of organised piracy on books have appeared, including street selling, illegal commercial photocopying , but also printing piracy, including the use of forged or stolen banderols . Although, piracy of copyright and related rights decreased compared to past years, further measures should be taken to combat book piracy, and piracy on optical disks should also be targeted decisively.