FOR years now, movie producers and distributors have bewailed the rise of "piracy" on the high seas of the local entertainment scene. Some say that 30 to 40 percent of films' potential income is lost because unauthorized tapes of new movies can be bought on the sly weeks before those films start their commercial run in town.

That's why raids are regularly conducted on video outlets suspected of duplicating and selling pirated tapes of films. Despite these raids, however, the pirates persist. In fact, they've now gone beyond video cassettes and are now selling VCDs at greatly reduced prices.

Some weeks ago, a colleague of ours was able to buy five VCDs of new films even before they opened in town. Authorized VCDs of new movies are priced at something like P425 at legit outlets, but the colorum VCDs cost only from P100 to P120 each.

Prices can be brought down that drastically because the pirated tapes don't pay video royalties to the films' producers or distributors, and no taxes to the government.

We did some more asking around and found out that pirated VCDs (as well as audio CDs) can be bought out in the open on the sidewalks of Cubao, Recto and Raon, and at shopping malls.

Of course, when you buy a pirated VCD, you run the risk of getting your hands on a lemon, a poor version copied on the run in moviehouses abroad during screenings of those movies, weeks before they open in the Philippines.

This is apparently the case with quite a number of the fake VCDs sold here, because they have images that don't "fit" the TV screen, since they were shot near the movie screen.

In addition, the sound is bad, and movie patrons can sometimes be seen crossing in front of the camera and vocally reacting to what is being shown in the theater. Some tapes even have Chinese subtitles.

So, why do people buy such shoddy copies? Because they're cheap, and because they're available weeks before the movies open here, thus enabling the buyer to have his very own "advance screening" of those much-talked-about films, and beating his friends to the draw in terms of being up-to-date with what's happening in the movies.

Incidentally, the poor copies may soon be a thing of the past because some outlets of unauthorized VCDs now allow buyers to preview tapes before the sale is closed. This way, buyers can select the best copies and thus avoid getting disappointed once they get home.

Our colleague believes that the trade in pirated VCDs is on the rise. In fact, there are little stores that now specialize in unauthorized tapes. Why aren't they raided? They may be "malakas" with some important people, our source surmises.

On the audio front, the trade is even busier. These days, you can buy three CDs for only P200. In addition, many of the tapes are "compilations," collections of currently popular tunes by all the top artists, so the pirated CDs are both figuratively and literally a steal.

Well, that's the way that producers' and distributors' cookies are crumbling. Can anything be done that will remedy the sorry situation? If raids aren't turning out to be major deterrents, what can work?

It could help if the buyers of these cheap tapes are better-informed about the very negative effects of this trade in pirated VCDs and CDs. If a producer makes less money, he'll have to cut back on his production budget or rely more on commercial plot and character formulas than on quality concepts.

So, the ones who really lose out in the end aren't the producers, but the film artists and the viewing public. In buying cheap tapes, we are robbing the producer, the filmmaker, the distributor, the government-and ourselves!

So, the next time you see cheap VCDs of new movies being sold on a sidewalk somewhere, think before you buy. Better still, don't buy.