By DANNY O. SAGUN

AT LAST, law enforcers confiscated Thursday pirated discs (CDs and DVDs) being sold at the downtown area. We have long been wondering why the police, the National Bureau of Investigation, and other concerned agencies are hesitant to conduct raids at such sidewalk stores peddling pirated discs particularly rated triple XXX movies disguised as scandal tapes.

The peddlers are that bold to display their wares and yet left untouched. What happened to the so-called plain view doctrine?
An NBI operative once told us they could not just move and confiscate those illegally-sold items without word from the concerned government agency, the Optical Media Board. Besides there are many more pressing matter that the NBI is giving priority to.

The flagrant violation of laws by some traders however needs prompt action by our concerned agencies. OMB may not have regional or local offices but we believe the police and the NBI are deputized operatives so they can move anytime without waiting for OMB reps to come personally.

Constant surprise raids may force the peddlers to think of selling goods other than the pirated music and movie discs. There are many other items that click to the customers aside from the illegal discs.

We think the music and the movie industry should also consider lowering their price tags for them to compete head on with the pirates. Prices of legal (we do not say original here since all those discs for sale are just plain copies) CDs or DVDs are still very prohibitive ranging from P300 to P500.

Sale items still cost P100 to P150. If the producers can lower newly-released copies to P100 to P150, we believe buyers would rather buy them. Sale items should be priced like the pirated ones – 3 for P100. For sure they would be selling like hot cakes.

DiscS, by the way, may just follow the fate of the betamax and the VHS tapes of yesteryears with the gaining popularity of MP3 and MP4 gadgets which can hold hundreds or up to thousands of songs and videos depending on the capacity of the memory card or the flash drive. Songs and movies can be readily downloaded thru the Internet and pretty soon thru your favorite cellphone service provider.

Smart has started offering music albums for downloads but we have yet to successfully obtain one. An album download costs P50 which we don’t need to spend anyway as we can just transfer any music or video to our CP from our PC.

Time may come when we won’t need those discs – legal or pirated – anymore. While they command a good price yet at this time, the producers should prescribe a price that is affordable to the masa who are the majority customers anyway.

The NBI and the police can then concentrate on their other major concerns, that is, the campaign against criminality.