The justification for online piracy

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Online piracy is a major problem facing the digital industry including the music, film, software, and eBooks industry. Research shows for example that about $12.5 billion is lost annually as a result of Piracy in the music industry, almost all the music downloaded online (95%) is non-copyrighted, and 42% of software being used across the world is downloaded illegally. While these figures are alarming there seem to be justifications for online piracies.

The justification for online piracy is associated with poverty. The cost of many of the items being downloaded illegally online is too high compared to the cost of pirated copies of those items. People who cannot afford to pay this high price are left with no option but to get adulterated copies of the items either for a fraction of the original cost or even for free. What is the evidence for this? Research has found that the vast majority of people who download or upload pirated copies of original items are from developing countries. China in Asia topped the list followed by Columbia in Latin America. The amount of illegal downloads in each of these countries is over 50%.

Besides poverty, another main factor which a number of people have cited as a reason for participating in online piracies is the convenience and risk-free involved in obtaining illegal downloads. Unlike conventional crimes such as burglary and shoplifting which require the criminal to be present at the scene for the act to be committed, people do not necessarily need to travel anywhere to commit online piracy. All they need for an online piracy are a computer and an access to the internet either to download the illegal materials or upload them.

Tackling the problem of online piracy therefore cannot be successful without addressing these issues. In regards to poverty, manufacturers or retailers of online materials targeted by pirates should ensure that such digital materials are not too expensive for people of low income to afford. However, the task of establishing a price that consumers might consider all right and less expensive for an item is tricky and difficult to achieve considering that under normal circumstances retailers do not sell their items below the cost price. Regarding the ease and convenience involved in downloading or uploading eBooks, for example, manufacturers should ensure that better security is incorporated in such products to make them hard for pirates to copy or download. Already there is security software used by some academic websites to protect contents on these sites from being copied or downloaded.

While it is desirable to tackle these root causes of online piracies it is also desirable to introduce tougher sanctions for online pirates. Presently, sanctions for online pirates are patchy and do not provide adequate deterrence for online piracy. In developing countries where the rate of piracies is highest, for example, there are hardly any law to combat online piracies. Developed countries fare a little better than their counterparts in tackling online piracies in that there are sanctions in the form of fines for online piracies. However, the subjects of these sanctions have been only individuals who were caught engaging in massive online piracies. A typical sanction for an individual who is involved in low scale piracy acts is either a warning letter about the termination of the pirate’s account or possible prosecution.

Policy makers should not treat online piracies differently to conventional crimes. There should be similar sanctions both for online piracies and conventional crimes for the fact that victims of both crimes suffer similar fate. Victims of online piracies are robbed of their proceeds as a result of the crimes just as victims of conventional crimes. The perception that victims of online piracies can still sell the original copies of the materials being pirated by criminals and as a result tend to suffer less harm than victims of conventional crimes is flawed. They cannot sell the original copy of a digital material to any person who has got an illegal copy of it. Therefore, whether the original material is taken by criminals as in conventional crimes or an illegal version of the copy is being made by the criminals as in online piracy, retailers tend to suffer loss as a result of these crimes.

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