Piracy Essay

Protection of intellectual property against piracy is nowadays one of the hottest topics: lawsuits and cases are filed against providers of illegal digital content, property of companies making copied of protected DVD-disks is seized, IP addresses of P2P trackers and depositories of books and multimedia are blocked… However, is piracy an absolute evil? “Should the conjunction of creativity and commerce continue to be defined in terms of a binomial distinction forged in the Industrial Revolution?” (Johns, 2009, p. 516)
Medosch states that “piracy, despite being an entirely commercially motivated activity carried out in black or grey markets, fulfils culturally important functions” (Reader, p.318). It should be noted that Medosch related this statement to regions suffering from colonialism and imperialism and to countries affected by the TRIPS agreement. However, piracy is a multifaceted phenomenon, and should be regarded in cultural context before labeling it as crime.
First of all, what is piracy? This broad concept includes sales of copied multimedia, software and hardware hacking, spreading copyrighted material over the Internet, copying and sharing protected materials, etc. According to Karaganis, piracy is “the ubiquitous, increasingly digital practices of copying that fall outside the boundaries of copyright law” (Karaganis, 2011, p.9). It is true that piracy affects the economy of many countries, and it might affect the income of people producing copyrighted material – software, book, music, movies, pictures, etc. However, correct estimates of the impact of piracy on the economy were not performed due to two common errors. Karaganis outlines these two prejudices that take place in the sphere of intellectual protection of property. First of all, it is difficult to measure the substitution rates associated with piracy, i.e. how often pirated production replaces a legal sale. Secondly, he states that there’s a tendency to ignore the countervailing benefits of piracy and to perceive it as a drain to the economy (Karaganis, 2011). In many cases, consumers might wish to visit a good movie in a cinema after watching it at home in worse quality, purchase a hard copy of the book they value and obtaining a whole album of a new rock band after listening to downloaded tracks. Thus, P2P websites like the well-known http://thepiratebay.org can also stimulate demand for commercial products rather than destroy it.
Piracy is highly common for emerging economies: high piracy is witnessed in Russia, China, India, Ukraine and Brazil. In my opinion, piracy can be abundant due to political and economical reasons. If the regime prohibits certain materials, cultures or authors, like it is in China and Korea, it’s natural that people will seek access to this information through other channels. “In these cases the global scope of the market for pirated digital products gains additional importance, since it offers potential access to a legally unavailable product” (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2009, p.62).
One more important issue stimulating piracy (which was not clearly explained by Medosch) is the variety of income and living standards around the world. For emerging economies and developing countries the pricing for copyrighted material might be totally unaffordable. Moreover, prices for copyrighted materials are set in the native country, and remain the same for anyone willing to get access to this item. As a result, someone in India might have to spend 1/3 of his monthly income on a book or a piece of software. Such dramatic difference of purchasing capacity evidently stimulates piracy. If manufacturers and sellers of digital content were able to adjust their prices to the local economic realities, the sector of piracy which reduces legal sales might significantly shrink. However, income gap between developed and developing countries is very large, and while it exists, piracy will prosper as the means of crossing the “digital divide” between people all over the world.
Thus, I agree with Medosch that piracy performs culturally important functions. I believe that piracy is one of the drivers that helps people unable to obtain recent achievements of world thought at their fair price to stay tuned with the world, and to progress further. I believe that emerging economies, poorer layers and people living under authoritarian regimes have the chance of improving their lives, making them richer and progressive and adding freedom to their lives due to piracy. From this point of view, the estimated losses due to piracy can be considered a certain form of donation to those who are struggling to reach the top economies.