Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand discussion

[Danyl Strype <strypey AT disintermedia.net.nz>]

Kia ora koutou

I just stumbled across a report published in March, 2011, entitled
'Media Piracy in Emerging Economies':
http://www.ssrc.org/features/view/media-piracy-in-emerging-economies//

The report gives the findings of a three year study by 35 researchers,
looking at illegal copying in 'global south' countries like Brazil,
India, Russia, South Africa, Mexico and Bolivia". It's major findings
are worth quoting in full:

>>
* Prices are too high. High prices for media goods, low incomes, and
cheap digital technologies are the main ingredients of global media
piracy. Relative to local incomes in Brazil, Russia, or South Africa,
the retail price of a CD, DVD, or copy of MS Office is five to ten
times higher than in the US or Europe. Legal media markets are
correspondingly tiny and underdeveloped.

* Competition is good. The chief predictor of low prices in legal
media markets is the presence of strong domestic companies that
compete for local audiences and consumers. In the developing world,
where global film, music, and software companies dominate the market,
such conditions are largely absent.

* Antipiracy education has failed. The authors find no significant
stigma attached to piracy in any of the countries examined. Rather,
piracy is part of the daily media practices of large and growing
portions of the population.

* Changing the law is easy. Changing the practice is hard. Industry
lobbies have been very successful at changing laws to criminalize
these practices, but largely unsuccessful at getting governments to
apply them. There is, the authors argue, no realistic way to reconcile
mass enforcement and due process, especially in countries with
severely overburdened legal systems.

* Criminals can’t compete with free. The study finds no systematic
links between media piracy and organized crime or terrorism in any of
the countries examined. Today, commercial pirates and transnational
smugglers face the same dilemma as the legal industry: how to compete
with free.

* Enforcement hasn’t worked. After a decade of ramped up enforcement,
the authors can find no impact on the overall supply of pirated goods.
<<

Now remind me again, what is the justification for the "intellectual
property protections" being shoehorned into the Trans-Pacific
Partnership Agreement?

Ma te wā
Strypey

-- 
Danyl Strype
Community Developer
Disintermedia.net.nz/strype

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