DUBAI: A click of the mouse and the download begins to make its way onto the hard drive. For Abdullah Aziz, this is the only way he has been able to listen to music and watch movies in the past five years. He argued that with costs of DVDs and iTunes still too high, he uses illegal downloading sites to get the job done “I have no other choice really,” begins the 32-year-old investment banker in Dubai. “I download so much that it just would kill my savings if I was forced to pay for it all,” he told Bikyamasr.com. On films, he hopes that the American giant Netflix will soon arrive in the Gulf, because “I want to support the studios, and I go to the cinema, but to buy a DVD here it is more expensive than in the US.” Aziz is not an outlier, in fact, he is among the 95 percent of people in the Middle East, notably in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, who partake in the illegal downloading business. According to Claudius Boller, a business development director at Universal Music MENA, in comments published by Gulf News “we need to educate customers that music has a big value and only when we pay musicians we can bring it to professional studios to create a great music.” That could be changing, however, as Boller and Universal are leading an effort to form a partnership with the largest computer manufacturer HP to make purchasing music easier. The new alliance gives HP's new customers who purchase Envy Sleekbooks access to the Universal Music's rich catalogue of music, with the launch of HP Play – a new digital music experience – across the Middle East. Digital music enthusiasts will be able create personalized playlists and enjoy unlimited streaming and 10 downloads a month at no cost. “It could help us out, but it is not a solution. What if we want to go to the gym with our iPod, what then?” asked Aziz. That's the issue that Boller and others will be seeking to address as they move forward on the HP Play construct. For them, it is an uphill battle against piracy, in a region that has little legislation on digital copyright laws and even poorer regulation. HP Play is now available in the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan. Aziz argued that he and his friends will continue to use the downloading sites such as Pirate Bay and other torrent sites “as long as the cost of the hard copy remains out of reach.” As prices come down, he argued, “we are more than ready to buy the real deal, but it has to be fair.”
