Education and development on the high seas of copyright infringement

When is a pirate not a pirate? When he’s trying to get an education. Alan Story, Colin Darch and Debora Halbert track the course of the criminalisation of copyright infringement from western bedrooms to the university campuses of the developing world.

“If it is a sin for the poor to steal from the rich, it must be a much bigger sin for the rich to steal from the poor. Don’t rich countries pirate poor countries’ best scientists, engineers, doctors, nurses and programmers? When global corporations come to operate in the Philippines, don’t they pirate the best people from local firms? If it is bad for poor countries like ours to pirate the intellectual property of rich countries, isn’t it a lot worse for rich countries like the US to pirate our intellectuals? In fact, we are benign enough to take only a copy, leaving the original behind; rich countries are so greedy that they take away the originals, leaving nothing behind.”

– Roberto Verzola, Pegging the World’s Biggest

The word ‘piracy’ is at the top of the agenda of many Western governments. In June 2005, for example, the European Communities circulated a “Communication on the Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights” that emphasised “the worrying evolution of counterfeiting and piracy worldwide.” A March 2006 follow-up document fretted that enforcement measures provided under the terms of the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property (TRIPS) were not having the desired results and needed to be improved through increased surveillance efforts by Interpol, customs authorities, and other agencies. Curbing “piracy” is rising up the agenda of some non-Western countries as well; in the latter case, their concerns are focusing on the “piracy” of the work of Western stars and sometimes the “piracy” is of the work of popular local artists. What are we to make of the so-called “pirating” of copyrighted products?

Before we get into the question, one initial matter needs to be cleared up. Is “piracy” the correct word to use to define this phenomenon? If not, why are the words “piracy” and “pirates” being used so widely by Western governments, large media corporations, the media itself, and others?

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