JEDDAH, 12 December 2006 — Black market dealers of pirated American and Arabic DVD motion pictures are constantly innovating their techniques.

Earlier this year, Arab News reported about media pirates using SMS messaging and even websites to advertise their catalogues. Now the websites have gotten more advanced, even offering shopping cart services as online checkouts.

One of the most well organized pirated DVD sites is the www.dvdlife.net. It not only offers hundreds of English and Arabic, movies, TV series and plays, but they have movie summaries, profiles of actors, reviews and a site search engine for speedy one-click shopping.

“All of our movies are crystal clear,” boasts the Arabic-language website, which also offers translation services for inserting Arabic subtitles in movies.

The service offers home delivery to customers in Jeddah that order at least five movies.

For customers elsewhere in the Kingdom, the service advertises a SR65 price tag for FedEx shipments.

Saudi authorities are focusing their efforts on public markets and street vendors, leaving cyberspace wide open for use by tech-savvy sellers.

Sami Al-Harbi, an official involved in tracking media piracy for the Ministry of Information and Culture, said that the online strategy of the culprits is relatively new and that the ministry is preparing a strategy for confronting online sellers of unlicensed media.

“During the last three months authorities have confiscated around 50,000 pirated DVDs, music and software CDs and cassettes,” he said, pointing out that various departments coordinate these raids.

Al-Harbi said that they practice field inspection trips at least three times a week to markets, stalls, Playstation booths and sometimes houses, where they receive intelligence and tips.