TIME/CNN Poll

By some estimates, pirated DVDs in Asia cost Hollywood nearly $1 billion in lost revenue last year. But a TIME/CNN survey of 12 countries, conducted by TNS, may offer some solace. A majority of the Asians polled are against piracyat least in theorywith 60% of respondents agreeing that it is theft and 74% opining that copyright laws should be better enforced. In India, whose flourishing IT industry relies on strong intellectual-property laws, nearly 90% believe law enforcement should be strengthened. Only in Indonesia, where 45% of the respondents admitted to purchasing pirated goods in the past year, did a majority disagree that this was stealing.

The message may also not be getting through in China, piracy’s ground zero, where authorities declined to allow TNS to conduct the poll. A February survey in Nanjing reported that only 4% of respondents felt guilty about buying pirated goods. Says Professor Zhang Zhiqiang, head of Nanjing University’s Publishing Science Institute, which conducted that survey: “Chinese people want to know about the world, but things are expensive, and maybe piracy is the only way.”