Freedom from Choice: Arab Anti-Piracy Chief Wants Harsher Penalties for Saudi Game Pirates

Rampant piracy in Saudi Arabia is strangling development of the videogame industry in the Middle East. That's the verdict rendered by the head of the Arabian Anti-Piracy Alliance at the Dubai World Game Expo this week.

According to Scott Butler, the chief executive of the AAA, piracy rates across the pan-Arab region are near 90 percent. Whereas in Europe and the U.S. eight to 12 games are sold for each console sale, in Saudi Arabia those numbers are inverted. Ten consoles are sold for every legitimate purchase of a single videogame.

Butler, not surprisingly for an anti-piracy official, says the problem is that Saudi is not jailing enough people for stealing games. "In the UAE they are sending pirates to prison a lot, whereas in Saudi Arabia there has never been a judgment like that for any kind of pirate. When they mete out the judgement of imprisonment, that's when the market will finally crack."

That might be the first time the Saudi legal system was chastised for being too lenient. And therein lies the absurdity of Butler's proposal. The problem isn't that pirates aren't being dealt with harshly enough; it's that Saudi censorship laws are too harsh. Censorship in that country has effectively driven the videogame industry underground. The kingdom's fear of media that challenges its cultural values has created a thriving entertainment black market, of which games are a key segment. Ratcheting up penalties for selling pirated games will only boost the cost of games, potentially hurting console sales in the process.

While it's extremely unlikely the Saudi royal family will ever relax the hand of censorship, Asheesh Malaney of Colourblind Entertainment may be onto another solution — developing Western-style AAA games with an Arab cultural perspective. Colourblind is currently developing Sharq Warriors, which the studio claims is the first game featuring a contemporary action-adventure hero who is Arab.

Iran, whose entertainment is also heavily regulated by the state, is also a hotbed of piracy. According to Mehrdad Agah, chariman of Puya Arts Software, 99% of all games sold in Iran are pirated. "There are no copyright laws, or at least the government does not enforce them."

It's not hard to see why this is the case. The Iranian government enforces strict laws about what its citizens can see and play in order to satisfy cultural mores and religious dogma. Then it looks the other way while the black market pillages Western intellectual property the government has a political and economic interest in subverting.

Trying to fight piracy in these countries by encouraging them to lock even more of their citizens up is not only destined to fail, it borders on immoral. And it's a shame to see that argument made on behalf of the videogame industry. It's no coincidence that the countries with the highest piracy rates (Saudi, Iran, China) have some of the most draconian censorship policies on the planet. The true counter to piracy is more freedom, not less.