The Wars on Piracy and Their Dilemmas

Citation: Marco Ricolfi (1999) The Wars on Piracy and Their Dilemmas. International Association for the Advancement of Teaching and Research in Intellectual Property (RSS)
Internet Archive Scholar (search for fulltext): The Wars on Piracy and Their Dilemmas
Download: http://www.wipo.int/mdocsarchives/ATRIP GVA 99/ATRIP GVA 99 7 E.pdf
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Summary

Lawyers firmly believe piracy is bad: copyright industries huge, but doubts exist, eg are entire nations really "rogue" because they enforce inadequately? Dilemmas:

• Inducement: it is monopoly rent from branded luxury goods that attract counterfeits; effective anti-infringement mechanism increases costs, driving up prices, increasing attraction. "Wars on priacy tend to multiply their own opponents exponentially, instead of stamping them out of the market."
• Downstream-users: era of cheap copying thus mass piracy only just begun; attempts to restrict subvert fair use and other provisions allowing for criticism and other free speech concerns.
• Multilateral-monopoly: proliferation of exclusive rights abets holdouts and strategic bargaining.