Media Piracy in Emerging Economies

An extensive report on piracy in Russia, Brazil, India, South Africa, Mexico and Bolivia was prepared by the Council for Research in the Field of Social Sciences , an authoritative international non-profit organization. This report is the result of three years of work by thirty-five researchers from different countries. It contains more than four hundred pages and is available for free download, including in Russian. This extremely interesting document was mentioned on Habré only in passing , and then the Russian translation did not yet exist. For a text of this size, this is a very significant factor.

The two main “storylines” running through the report are, on the one hand, the explosive growth of piracy due to the availability and low cost of digital technology and the Internet, and, on the other hand, the change of laws and the prosecution of pirates under pressure from the copyright industry lobby. It follows from the report that attempts to combat piracy by prohibitions were practically unsuccessful, and that the problem of piracy, first of all, is the problem of accessibility of content on legal trading floors.

Key findings of the report

Prices are too high. High prices, low income and low cost of digital technologies are the main engines of piracy. Regarding the income level in Russia, South Africa or Brazil, a CD, DVD or a copy of MS Office in these countries costs from five to ten times more than in the USA or Europe. Accordingly, legal trading floors here are in a barely living condition.

Competition is good. For prices on the legal market to go down, you need the presence of strong local players. In developing countries, global media corporations dominate the market, discouraging the emergence of strong competitors.

Anti-piracy propaganda failed. In all the countries studied, piracy is not considered something shameful and is practiced daily by a significant part of the population.

Changing the law is easy. Changing habits is difficult. Rightholders have made great strides by lobbying for legislative changes criminalizing piracy. However, they failed to enforce these laws. The law enforcement systems of developing countries can easily compensate for the severity of laws by the fact that they are not enforced.

Criminals are not sweet either. Studies have found no systematic link between piracy and organized crime or terrorism. Like the “white” intellectual property dealers, criminals trying to make money on counterfeit goods are not able to compete with free downloads.

Coercion does not work.Ten years of high-profile anti-piracy action did not affect the volume and availability of pirated content.


The translation of this remarkable document was made by teachers and students of the Department of Intellectual Property Economics of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (they also participated in the preparation of the report), for which many thanks to all of them. Here are excerpts from the preface by the translation editor, doctor of economic sciences Anatoly Kozyrev:

... We felt that acquaintance with this material would be very useful for our politicians, copyright holders, law enforcement officers, judges and just citizens who want to have an adequate understanding of the economy of copyright, freedom of the Internet and media piracy.

We deliberately use the term “media”, which is much broader than the media, because media is also games, software, music, etc. In the same way, the term “content” cannot be replaced by the word “content”; here it means everything that can be digitized in principle.

... It should also be noted that only a relatively small part of the material collected and analyzed by us was included in the final report of Media Piracy in Emerging Economies. Work in the project together with our foreign partners has expanded our understanding of the subject and has shown that further research on the topic is interesting, necessary and, very importantly, quite within our power. It will certainly continue.

Download the report in PDF format here.