EA and Cops Just Say No to Pirates

Electronic Arts says that within two days of the release of its World Cup '98 video game last month, counterfeit copies of it were already hitting the streets of Singapore. Chris Chapin, EA's director of intellectual property enforcement has said that in 1997, counterfeiting cost Electronic Arts losses of several hundred million dollars around the globe. Industry trade group Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA) estimates that worldwide theft of intellectual property costs the whole industry more than US$3.2 billion a year.

It was for these reasons that EA began a worldwide effort to eliminate counterfeit copies of its games. EA has been sending cease and desist letters to retailers in Singapore, and last weekend it began backing up the threat implicit in those letters.

EA and Singaporean authorities conducted a series of raids on retail outlets in Singapore over the weekend. More than 880 pirated games were seized in the raids, including hundreds of copies of World Cup '98.

EA estimates that the value of the goods seized in the raids exceeded $44,000 (which leaves about $3.195 million worth of pirated games still out there).