Media Piracy Essay

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Back in 2007, Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI), published a report by Stephen Siwek. The report primarily focused on the economic impacts of sound recordings piracy on the U.S. economy. Piracy harms legitimate middlemen, media creators, and governments in the supply chain of media products. On the other hand, consumers of pirated media products do not enjoy some of the benefits that one would otherwise enjoy with purchases of legitimate media products (Siwek, 2007). Media products that can be pirated include music, sound recordings, films, TV programs, books, software, and video games among other media products that are produced under copyright laws. Karaganis (2011) defined piracy as unlawful copying and transmission of copyrighted media without authorization from a copyright owner, particularly when an individual intends to use the pirated media for commercial gain or achieve any other unauthorized purpose for which a particular media product is not meant. The legal landscape of piracy is blurred with lack of clear definition of piracy, especially when one backs up copies of media that he or she has legally bought for personal consumption. Despite the legal complexities that permeate into the field of media piracy and intellectual property rights, media piracy portends some adverse economic effects on revenues to media content producers as well the larger economies.
How Piracy Causes small effects the Global and the American Markets
The U.S. economy is significantly affected by media piracy more than any other country in the world. According to Siwek (2007), the U.S. holds a major stake in the media production industry because of the comparatively higher concentration of media production firms in the country. The economi...

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...players in counties like the U.S. and Australia. However, a close examination of the plummeting physical media product sales could be countered by the increasing sales of digitized media content. The techno savvy generation may not after all, be interested in downloading music or movies for unauthorized use, but just to get the entertainment services which is why online sales of digital media products is on the increase. In order to counter the effect of online piracy, media producers need to remodel their approach to business to make more money through advertising and in-app purchases the way some video game producers are doing it. Overall, the effects of piracy on the media industry could be exploited to increase income for the industry players rather than point an accusing finger without adopting the best practices that are in sync with media consumption trends.

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