Context: Why is this project important?

Negotiations around intellectual property rights (IPR) are increasingly a key factor in international trade and an important item on the international development agenda. International treaties such as the World Trade Organization's Trade Related Intellectual Property Systems (WHO-TRIPS) agreement, as well as bilateral (free trade) agreements, have focused on strengthening and expanding international property protection of films, music, books, computer software and online services against infringement.  Generally, the infringement of IPR has been termed 'piracy', with the TRIPS agreement defining pirated goods as "goods which are copies made without the consent of the right holder or person duly authorized by the right holder in the country of production."

At present, the primary reference on piracy used in trade discussions consists of reports produced by the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) - an association of United States copyright industries. It can be argued that these reports are narrow accounts of media piracy presenting an economy of alleged loss to northern-based multi-nationals at the hands of southern pirates, and that they perpetuate a negotiating advantage for the rich economies who lead the call for enforcement of the global intellectual property regime.

However, there is the need to question the basic premises behind the concepts of piracy and how it is accounted for. Amongst the key questions that still need to be better understood, the most prominent ones are: Is the 'one pirated item equals one loss in sale' logic a flawed one in measuring media piracy?  What are alternative frameworks for assessing the costs and benefits of piracy?  Can piracy be considered a form of market correction, countering global, uniform pricing strategies of large IP producers?  What values can be attributed to piracy when taken as a quotidian and international form of access to knowledge and culture?  What has been and will be the impact of digital reproduction/distribution, particularly as Internet connectivity reaches the masses?  How is the discourse and enforcement around piracy formed and played out for the public? This multi-country comparative study of media piracy will attempt to answer some of these questions.

The Project: How does this initiative address the development problem?
Researchers will undertake a set of country case studies aimed at better understanding the nature and extent of media piracy in Brazil, India and South Africa. The Ford Foundation is supporting additional country studies in Russia and the United States. The project is expected to provide the basis for more rational debate on the issue of media piracy and give Southern actors greater leverage in North-South trade negotiations over access to knowledge goods, especially software.

This project is based on the premise that piracy remains a development rather than a criminal issue, i.e. the fact that knowledge commodities in the developing world are primarily - and in some cases exclusively - mediated through pirate markets.  This is especially true of enabling tools such as software and the increasingly digital record of cultural heritage.

The research teams hope to shift our focus by providing an understanding of how media piracy is access to knowledge/culture (for much of the developing world) and examining livelihood dimensions in the calculus of cost of media piracy. The project aims to provide a body of evidence that can be informative for policy makers and bring alternative considerations into the debates over media piracy

Objectives:
The project seeks to research and better understand the nature and extent of media piracy in India, South Asia, South Africa and Brazil. The project will be among the very few studies researching the issue of media piracy. It will seek to inform and support national Intellectual Property policy making at the national, regional, and international levels about the complex relationships between piracy, inequality, cultural production and development by achieving the following specific objectives:

• Provide the basis for a more rationale debate about access to knowledge, which for much of the world currently means access to pirated media goods.  This is true especially of enabling tools like software and of the increasingly digital record of cultural heritage. It is hoped that the project will open a different debate on piracy other than the standard one on enforcement and criminality;
• Develop an account of piracy that makes fuller account of the costs, benefits, and limitations of Intellectual Property enforcement, in transitional economies and for poor populations. This will open a wider discussion of cultural needs and community practices of sharing and circulation in societies characterized by conditions of high social inequality; 
• Gain a better understanding of the nature and the extent of piracy among different communities in South Africa, India, South Asia and Brazil and develop a better grasp of pirate networks;
• Develop capacity in researching issues related to Intellectual Property Rights and access to knowledge in developing countries and encourage the active participation of southern based researchers in a cross regional research network;
• Produce a detailed study of enforcement infrastructure and of the anti-piracy industry including government structures, industry lobbies, corporate legal firms and the links to judicial policies strategies;
• Produce a comparative analysis of the nature and extent of media piracy which would inform the debate on access to knowledge related issues;
• Provide more leverage to Southern actors in North-South trade negotiations over access to knowledge goods - especially software;
• Disseminate the research finding and recommendations with the aim to influence policy debate; and
• Disseminate the results of the country studies to the India, Brazil, South Africa (IBSA) civil society forum to engage with existing government IBSA forum on the information society and Intellectual Property Rights implications of the research.

Development Impact
One of the key expected development impacts is the contribution to the body of evidence and scholarship to influence policy related to IPR in the countries of study.  For example, the Brazilians are already engaging policy makers on Intellectual Property enforcement. Moreover, the South African team plans to disseminate and reach the South African Department of Trade and Industry and the Parliamentary Committee on Trade and Industry. In India, there is a unique opportunity to engage with the sectors of the economy that are striving towards fair use (i.e. web hosting companies, search engines, etc.).

This research brings fresh angles into scholarship concerned with the cultural, social, and economic significance of media piracy, particularly in the digital domain. It is hoped that the methodology developed in this project will be replicated in other countries beyond the original set, to expand regional data collection and our understanding of the issues, especially for insights into piracy at the trans-national level. This could become a community of international researchers on issues of media piracy. 

Outputs & Website
All publications and materials related to this project will be listed here as they become available.