Joe Karaganis (ed.): Media Piracy in Emerging Economies (2011) [EN, RU, ES, CN]

“Media Piracy in Emerging Economies is the first independent, large-scale study of music, film and software piracy in emerging economies, with a focus on Brazil, India, Russia, South Africa, Mexico and Bolivia.

Based on three years of work by some thirty-five researchers, Media Piracy in Emerging Economies tells two overarching stories: one tracing the explosive growth of piracy as digital technologies became cheap and ubiquitous around the world, and another following the growth of industry lobbies that have reshaped laws and law enforcement around copyright protection. The report argues that these efforts have largely failed, and that the problem of piracy is better conceived as a failure of affordable access to media in legal markets.

“The choice,” said Joe Karaganis, director of the project, “isn’t between high piracy and low piracy in most media markets. The choice, rather, is between high-piracy, high-price markets and high-piracy, low price markets. Our work shows that media businesses can survive in both environments, and that developing countries have a strong interest in promoting the latter. This problem has little to do with enforcement and a lot to do with fostering competition.””

Publisher The Social Science Research Council (SSRC), 2011
Distributed under a Consumer’s Dilemma license
ISBN 978-0-98412574-6
440 pages

PDF (English, added on 2018-5-11)
PDFs (4 languages, from publisher; updated 2015-5-14)

See also Shadow Libraries: Access to Knowledge in Global Higher Education, 2018.