Intellectual Property and the Third World
Businesses wanting to sell books, music, and movie DVDs in developing countries will find these markets an enormous challenge. The average person in these countries sill lives in poverty and considered basic amenities such as new cookware to be desirable and a higher standard of living. Entertainment media given the same prices in these countries as is seen in the west will only make them affordable to the rich in those countries. It might take the average person several days to earn the equivalent of twenty dollars.
Because Western media is so expensive in these countries, the consequence is that many do without and many more resort to shameless copying. The truth is that intellectual property rights are seldom respected in the third world. It is vastly cheaper to make crude copies, and many low-income families are content to have these. Not only does illegal copying save the local consumer a great deal of money, it creates business for local technicians and merchants. These activities are officially criminal, but laws against intellectual property infringement are not always enforced, because local officials understand these activities are beneficial to their economy.
Rampant copying in developing countries is a reality of the disparity of wealth that exists in the world. Impoverished countries want to develop, and the purchase of legal media and software is money that is leaving the country. Poor countries are like sponges that absorb wealth; their products are cheap and they are extremely frugal in their purchases. Also, digital media can be sent anywhere in the world thanks to modern technology. The black market value for bits of data is next to nothing.
Legitimate sales in developing countries will only rise when the standard of living does, and until then record companies and software developers must be willing to sell inexpensive versions of their products, if they wish to participate in these markets at all.The information party rocks on: IP, fundamentals and human development: all in a day’s reviewing work …