COPY goods worth 48 million baht were flattened by a steamroller at Phuket Customs today. Crushed as well were the hopes of thousands of Phuket tourists who may have had designs on imitation souvenirs.

DVDs, sunglasses, bags, t-shirts, watches, hats, belts and perfume . . . thousands of those items were destroyed with the Secretary General of the World Customs Organisation, Kunio Mikuriy, and Somchai Sajjapong, Chief of the Customs Department of Thailand, looking on.

Phuket is classed as a ''red zone area'' for violations of the worldwide Intellectual Property Rights Agreement, and destruction of copied goods is a regular event.

Tourists keen on snaring bargain fake designer goods might be better off paying for the real thing. An Austrian tourist has been fined 1000 euros in Italy for trying to buy a fake seven euro Louis Vuitton handbag.

Austrian pensioner Ursula Corel, 65, was spotted by authorities who scanned crowds with powerful binoculars from a lifeguard's tower at an Italian resort town near Venice.

Khun Somchai told Phuketwan that 648 people were arrested in Thailand for copyright offences involving 290 million bahts' worth of goods last year.

People who purchase copy goods on Phuket are not liable in the same way as the Austrian pensioner but Khun Somchai said the day could come when copyright holders at Phuket airport, for example, could demand the shirts off the backs of tourists as they left the island.

''The best advice is not to purchase copy goods,'' he said. ''Buying them cuts against the spirit of rewarding people for their own designs and brands, and it should not be encouraged.''