Not content with beseiging the lobbies of Brussels, Europe's intellectual property owners are now campaigning to get the enlarged Continent's normally apathetic voters involved. The Campaign for Creativity claims that at least 17,000 jobs a year are lost through the ineffective enforcement of intellectual property rights in Europe. If you want to get the European Parliament to do anything about it, contact your local MEP candidates and see how tough a line they're prepared to take.
The IPKat is surprised that the figure for lost jobs is so low, given the high level of losses which are estimated as being attributable to intellectual property infringement.
Join the Campaign here.
Find out about MEPs here.
CAMPAIGN FOR CREATIVITY
![CAMPAIGN FOR CREATIVITY]()
Reviewed by Jeremy
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Monday, May 31, 2004
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To be honest I don't understand how the Campaign arrived at the 17,000 figure. Most piracy is focussed on popular works (e.g. pop songs) - works which will have recouped their costs many times over (including labour costs) by the time they attract the attention of pirates. For the most part piracy eats into profit margins of popular artists or producers, i.e. deadweight transfers of consumer surplus. Only if it can be shown that piracy in fact deters putative creators from engaging in creative work could one assert that jobs are being lost. In truth, I would say that no-one really knows the effect, if any, of piracy on labour numbers. If labour figures is all that one is concerned with, one must also remember that piracy itself creates jobs, albeit of the black market variety.
ReplyDeleteJohn Cahir
It has been stated that one of the reasons that China is taking so long in improving its position on IPR is because the government realises that the counterfeit black market constitutes a large part of the economy, and to destablise it quickly could cause many problems. In a way, this is actually sensible, providing that it's clear that larger strategy is gradually moving the illegitimate economy into a legitimate and competitive one: no doubt something that takes a long time.
ReplyDelete17,000 is actually not an unreasonable figure, but I agree that piracy itself is supporting a larger economy (e.g. the entire market in portable MP3 players)