Illegal

Alcúdia town hall has started a campaign to raise awareness of the harmful effects of illegal street selling and to instruct as to the consequences of buying stuff from the looky-looky men (and for the most part it is they against whom this campaign is directed).

It may be recalled that Alcúdia passed additional laws a year ago, designed to stamp out street selling. The campaign presumably serves as a reminder of the fines that can be levied not only on those doing the selling but also on bars where it might occur and on those who purchase the DVDs and all the rest. The campaign also suggests that those laws have not had the desired effect, and a wander around The Mile only goes to reinforce that view. Quite why it has taken till September to initiate a poster campaign, who knows.

The ineffectiveness of the laws lies to a large part in the lack of policing and also in what the police can actually do. Take one looky off the streets and another one takes his place. There's a looky factory somewhere, churning out guys and fake Gucci glasses. Fine a looky and look where it gets you. Keep on looking for the looky. So fine the bars instead; bars, many of them, which now want nothing to do with the trade. However, some certainly of the bigger bars would need to employ someone specifically to stop the lookies coming onto terraces. There seem at times that many of them that the bars cannot keep stop serving in order to deal with another illegal seller. So fine the purchasers instead. Yep, and cop a load of bad publicity when some hapless and unaware tourists fork out for a crap watch or some duff Lady Gaga. I've not actually seen any of the posters that form part of this campaign, but the reports say that it goes under the title - "Tots contra la venda il-legal". Catalan. Maybe there should be more effort directed at tourists.

But whatever sort of campaign is instituted, a problem is that the punters don't see this illegal trade as any big deal. For many it is a bit of fun (though there are also tourists who get hacked off with the harassment). For many it is a cheap way of buying CDs and the rest. There was a recent radio report regarding a campaign by trading standards somewhere in England. The reporter spoke to a few of the purchasers. Aware they may have been that the trade was illegal, but it didn't bother them. The amounts being spent were not great - indeed they were low - and there was little concern that some of the products might be of inferior quality and that there was no comeback. What does it matter when what you're spending is so low? Trading standards, and no doubt the Alcúdia authorities also, can point to the losses that are incurred by rights holders because of counterfeiting, but they are of minor consequence to most people - just consider also the level of illegal downloading. Even the money that can be made from the big piracy operations probably don't bother people either. There was another report recently in England about police action that netted the producers of illegal DVDs whose "business" was said to be worth several million pounds.

Fining purchasers might sound like a strong deterrent, but only if people are aware of such fines and are also unwilling to take the risk. It doesn't deter. Some friends who visited Alcúdia earlier this summer were surprised to see what they took to be a bar owner going through a whole bunch of CDs and DVDs and sorting out what he wanted. As ever with illegal trades, and the lookies also deal in contraband of a more serious nature, it is attacking the sources of supply that can limit the trade. However, though successful interventions by the police have indeed been reported in Mallorca, the trade still carries on. It isn't that difficult to replicate, or at least one imagines it isn't.

And then there is the illegal trade that does not rely on the wretched lookies. But let's not go there.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - Spirit, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHz9Xag8LCM (the video is of an 80s incarnation of the band and not that good except for Ed Cassidy, the original drummer). Today's title - it featured Carlos Santana.

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