copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain

exclusive right In Anglo-Saxon law, an exclusive right, or exclusivity, is a de facto, non-tangible prerogative existing in law (that is, the power or, in a wider sense, right) to perform an action or acquire a benefit and to permit or deny others the right t ...

s granted to the copyright holder, such as the right to reproduce, distribute, display or perform the protected work, or to make

derivative work In copyright law, a derivative work is an expressive creation that includes major copyrightable elements of an original, previously created first work (the underlying work). The derivative work becomes a second, separate work independent in ...

s. The copyright holder is typically the work's creator, or a publisher or other business to whom copyright has been assigned. Copyright holders routinely invoke legal and technological measures to prevent and penalize copyright infringement. Copyright infringement disputes are usually resolved through direct negotiation, a notice and take down process, or litigation in civil court. Egregious or large-scale commercial infringement, especially when it involves

counterfeit To counterfeit means to imitate something authentic, with the intent to steal, destroy, or replace the original, for use in illegal transactions, or otherwise to deceive individuals into believing that the fake is of equal or greater value tha ...

ing, is sometimes prosecuted via the criminal justice system. Shifting public expectations, advances in digital technology and the increasing reach of the Internet have led to such widespread, anonymous infringement that copyright-dependent industries now focus less on pursuing individuals who seek and share copyright-protected content online, and more on expanding copyright law to recognize and penalize, as indirect infringers, the service providers and software distributors who are said to facilitate and encourage individual acts of infringement by others. Estimates of the actual economic impact of copyright infringement vary widely and depend on other factors. Nevertheless, copyright holders, industry representatives, and legislators have long characterized copyright infringement as piracy or theft – language which some U.S. courts now regard as

pejorative A pejorative or slur is a word or grammatical form expressing a negative or a disrespectful connotation, a low opinion, or a lack of respect toward someone or something. It is also used to express criticism, hostility, or disregard. Sometimes, a ...

or otherwise contentious.

Terminology

Copyright Infringement Mickey Mouse Myanmar

The terms ''piracy'' and ''theft'' are often associated with copyright infringement. The original meaning of ''

piracy Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable goods. Those who conduct acts of piracy are called pirates, v ...

'' is "robbery or illegal violence at sea", but the term has been in use for centuries as a synonym for acts of copyright infringement.T. Dekker
''Wonderfull Yeare''
1603, reprinted by University of Oregon '' Theft'', meanwhile, emphasizes the potential commercial harm of infringement to copyright holders. However, copyright is a type of

intellectual property Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, co ...

, an area of law distinct from that which covers robbery or theft, offenses related only to tangible

property Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, r ...

. Not all copyright infringement results in commercial loss, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1985 that infringement does not ''easily'' equate with theft.'' Dowling v. United States'' (1985), 473 U.S. 207, pp. 217–218. This was taken further in the case ''MPAA v. Hotfile'', where Judge

Kathleen M. Williams Kathleen Mary Williams (born 1956) is United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. She previously served as the Federal Public Defender for the Southern District of Florida. Early life a ...

granted a motion to deny the MPAA the usage of words whose appearance was primarily "pejorative". This list included the word "piracy", the use of which, the motion by the defense stated, serves no court purpose but to misguide and inflame the jury.

"Piracy"

The term "piracy" has been used to refer to the unauthorized copying, distribution and selling of works in copyright. The term "word-pirates" has been used as far back as 1603 to described unauthorized printing. The first use of the word 'piracy' itself to describe unauthorized copying dates back to at least 1700, as attested to in Edward Ward's 1700 poem ''A Journey to Hell'':

''Piracy, Piracy,'' they cry'd aloud, / What made you print my Copy, Sir, says one

The practice of labeling the infringement of exclusive rights in creative works as "piracy" predates statutory copyright law. Prior to the

Statute of Anne The Statute of Anne, also known as the Copyright Act 1710 (cited either as 8 Ann. c. 21 or as 8 Ann. c. 19), was an act of the Parliament of Great Britain passed in 1710, which was the first statute to provide for copyright regulated by the g ...

in 1710, the Stationers' Company of London in 1557, received a

Royal Charter A royal charter is a formal grant issued by a monarch under royal prerogative as letters patent. Historically, they have been used to promulgate public laws, the most famous example being the English Magna Carta (great charter) of 1215, b ...

giving the company a

monopoly A monopoly (from Greek language, Greek el, μόνος, mónos, single, alone, label=none and el, πωλεῖν, pōleîn, to sell, label=none), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situati ...

on publication and tasking it with enforcing the charter. Article 61 of the 1994

Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) is an international legal agreement between all the member nations of the World Trade Organization (WTO). It establishes minimum standards for the regulation by na ...

(TRIPs) requires

criminal In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in C ...

procedures and penalties in cases of "willful trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy on a commercial scale." Piracy traditionally refers to acts of copyright infringement intentionally committed for financial gain, though more recently, copyright holders have described online copyright infringement, particularly in relation to

peer-to-peer file sharing Peer-to-peer file sharing is the distribution and sharing of digital media using peer-to-peer (P2P) networking technology. P2P file sharing allows users to access media files such as books, music, movies, and games using a P2P software program t ...

networks, as "piracy".

Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...

and the

GNU Project The GNU Project () is a free software, mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collabor ...

have criticized the use of the word "piracy" in these situations, saying that publishers use the word to refer to "copying they don't approve of" and that "they ublishersimply that it is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnapping and murdering the people on them."

"Theft"

Copyright holders frequently refer to copyright infringement as theft, "although such misuse has been rejected by legislatures and courts". The slogan " Piracy is theft" was used beginning in the 1980s, and is still being used. In copyright law, infringement does not refer to theft of physical objects that take away the owner's possession, but an instance where a person exercises one of the exclusive rights of the copyright holder without authorization. Courts have distinguished between copyright infringement and theft. For instance, the

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

held in '' Dowling v. United States'' (1985) that bootleg phonorecords did not constitute stolen property. Instead,

interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft,
conversion Conversion or convert may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * "Conversion" (''Doctor Who'' audio), an episode of the audio drama ''Cyberman'' * "Conversion" (''Stargate Atlantis''), an episode of the television series * "The Conversion" ...
, or fraud. The Copyright Act even employs a separate term of art to define one who misappropriates a copyright: ' ..an infringer of the copyright.'

The court said that in the case of copyright infringement, the province guaranteed to the copyright holder by copyright law – certain

s – is invaded, but no control, physical or otherwise, is taken over the copyright, nor is the copyright holder wholly deprived of using the copyrighted work or exercising the exclusive rights held.

"Freebooting"

The term "freebooting" has been used to describe the unauthorized copying of online media, particularly videos, onto websites such as

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dust ...

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

. The word itself had already been in use since the 16th century, referring to pirates, and meant "looting" or "plundering". This form of the word – a

portmanteau A portmanteau word, or portmanteau (, ) is a blend of wordsfreeloading {{Short pages monitor and are considered essential to

freedom of speech Freedom of speech is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction. The right to freedom of expression has been recogni ...

. Another example is the practice of

compulsory licensing A compulsory license provides that the owner of a patent or copyright licenses the use of their rights against payment either set by law or determined through some form of adjudication or arbitration. In essence, under a compulsory license, an ...

, which is where the law forbids copyright owners from denying a license for certain uses of certain kinds of works, such as compilations and live performances of music. Compulsory licensing laws generally say that for certain uses of certain works, no infringement occurs as long as a royalty, at a rate determined by law rather than private negotiation, is paid to the copyright owner or representative

copyright collective Copyrights can either be licensed or assigned by the owner of the copyright. A copyright collective (also known as a copyright society, copyright collecting agency, licensing agency or copyright collecting society or collective management organiz ...

. Some fair dealing laws, such as Canada's, include similar royalty requirements. In Europe, the copyright infringement case '' Public Relations Consultants Association Ltd v Newspaper Licensing Agency Ltd'' had two prongs; one concerned whether a

news aggregator In computing, a news aggregator, also termed a feed aggregator, feed reader, news reader, RSS reader or simply an aggregator, is client software or a web application that aggregates syndicated web content such as online newspapers, blogs, ...

service infringed the copyright of the news generators; the other concerned whether the temporary

web cache A Web cache (or HTTP cache) is a system for optimizing the World Wide Web. It is implemented both client-side and server-side. The caching of multimedias and other files can result in less overall delay when browsing the Web. Parts of the sys ...

created by the

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

of a consumer of the aggregator's service, ''also'' infringed the copyright of the news generators. The first prong was decided in favor of the news generators; in June 2014 the second prong was decided by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which ruled that the temporary web cache of consumers of the aggregator did not infringe the copyright of the news generators.

Non-infringing types of works

In order to qualify for protection, a work must be an expression with a degree of originality, and it must be in a fixed medium, such as written down on paper or recorded digitally., for example. The idea itself is not protected. That is, a copy of someone else's original idea is not infringing unless it copies that person's unique, tangible ''expression'' of the idea. Some of these limitations, especially regarding what qualifies as original, are embodied only in case law (judicial precedent), rather than in statutes. In the U.S., for example, copyright case law contains a substantial similarity requirement to determine whether the work was copied. Likewise, courts may require computer software to pass an Abstraction-Filtration-Comparison test (AFC Test) to determine if it is too abstract to qualify for protection, or too dissimilar to an original work to be considered infringing. Software-related case law has also clarified that the amount of R&D, effort and expense put into a work's creation does not affect copyright protection. Evaluation of alleged copyright infringement in a court of law may be substantial; the time and costs required to apply these tests vary based on the size and complexity of the copyrighted material. Furthermore, there is no standard or universally accepted test; some courts have rejected the AFC Test, for example, in favor of narrower criteria.

Preventive measures

The BSA outlined four strategies that governments can adopt to reduce software piracy rates in its 2011 piracy study results: * "Increase public education and raise awareness about software piracy and IP rights in cooperation with industry and law enforcement." * "Modernize protections for software and other copyrighted materials to keep pace with new innovations such as cloud computing and the proliferation of networked mobile devices." * "Strengthen enforcement of IP laws with dedicated resources, including specialized enforcement units, training for law enforcement and judiciary officials, improved cross-border cooperation among law enforcement agencies, and fulfillment of obligations under the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)." * "Lead by example by using only fully licensed software, implementing software asset management (SAM) programs, and promoting the use of legal software in state-owned enterprises, and among all contractors and suppliers."

Legal

Corporations and legislatures take different types of preventive measures to deter copyright infringement, with much of the focus since the early 1990s being on preventing or reducing digital methods of infringement. Strategies include education, civil and criminal legislation, and international agreements,Ram D. Gopal and G. Lawrence Sanders. "International Software Piracy: Analysis of Key Issues and Impacts". Information Systems Research 9, no. 4 (December 1998): 380–397. as well as publicizing anti-piracy litigation successes and imposing forms of digital media copy protection, such as controversial DRM technology and anti-circumvention laws, which limit the amount of control consumers have over the use of products and content they have purchased. Legislatures have reduced infringement by narrowing the scope of what is considered infringing. Aside from upholding international copyright treaty obligations to provide general limitations and exceptions, nations have enacted compulsory licensing laws applying specifically to digital works and uses. For example, in the U.S., the DMCA, an implementation of the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty, considers digital transmissions of audio recordings to be licensed as long as a designated copyright collective's royalty and reporting requirements are met. The DMCA also provides safe harbor for digital service providers whose users are suspected of copyright infringement, thus reducing the likelihood that the providers themselves will be considered directly infringing. Some copyright owners voluntarily reduce the scope of what is considered infringement by employing relatively permissive, "open" licensing strategies: rather than privately negotiating license terms with individual users who must first seek out the copyright owner and ask for permission, the copyright owner publishes and distributes the work with a prepared license that anyone can use, as long as they adhere to certain conditions. This has the effect of reducing infringement – and the burden on courts – by simply permitting certain types of uses under terms that the copyright owner considers reasonable. Examples include free software licenses, like the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...

(GPL), and the Creative Commons licenses, which are predominantly applied to visual and literary works.

Protected distribution

To maximize revenue, pre-COVID-19 film distribution typically began with

movie theaters A movie theater (American English), cinema (British English), or cinema hall (Indian English), also known as a movie house, picture house, the movies, the pictures, picture theater, the silver screen, the big screen, or simply theater is a ...

(theatrical window), on average approximately 16 and a half weeks, before the release to

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of st ...

and DVD (entering its video window). During the theatrical window, digital versions of films are often transported in

data storage device Data storage is the recording (storing) of information (data) in a storage medium. Handwriting, phonographic recording, magnetic tape, and optical discs are all examples of storage media. Biological molecules such as RNA and DNA are consi ...

s by couriers rather than by

data transmission Data transmission and data reception or, more broadly, data communication or digital communications is the transfer and reception of data in the form of a digital bitstream or a digitized analog signal transmitted over a point-to-point or ...

. The data can be encrypted, with the key being made to work only at specific times in order to prevent leakage between screens.

Watermarking

Coded Anti-Piracy marks can be added to films to identify the source of illegal copies and shut them down. In 2006 a notable example of using Coded Anti-Piracy marks resulted in a man being arrested for uploading a screener's copy of the movie '' Flushed Away''. Some

photocopier A photocopier (also called copier or copy machine, and formerly Xerox machine, the generic trademark) is a machine that makes copies of documents and other visual images onto paper or plastic film quickly and cheaply. Most modern photocopier ...

s use

Machine Identification Code A Machine Identification Code (MIC), also known as printer steganography, yellow dots, tracking dots or secret dots, is a digital watermark which certain color laser printers and copiers leave on every printed page, allowing identification of th ...

dots for similar purposes. The

EURion constellation The EURion constellation (also known as Omron rings or doughnuts) is a pattern of symbols incorporated into a number of secure documents such as banknotes and ownership title certificates designs worldwide since about 1996. It is added to help ...

on banknotes is used to prevent copying to make

counterfeit currency Counterfeit money is currency produced without the legal sanction of a state or government, usually in a deliberate attempt to imitate that currency and so as to deceive its recipient. Producing or using counterfeit money is a form of fraud or fo ...

Economic impact of copyright infringement

Organizations disagree on the scope and magnitude of copyright infringement's free rider economic effects and public support for the copyright regime. The

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the executive of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with 27 members of the Commission (informally known as "Commissioners") headed by a President. It includes an administrative body ...

funded a study to analyze "the extent to which unauthorised online consumption of copyrighted materials (music, audiovisual, books and video games) displaces sales of online and offline legal content", across

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

, the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

and

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic countries, Nordic c ...

; the public funding behind the study provided a necessary basis for its neutrality. 30,000 users, including minors between 14 and 17 years, were surveyed among September and October 2014. While a negative impact was found for the film industry, videogame sales were positively affected by illegal consumption, possibly due to "the industry being successful in converting illegal users to paying users" and employing player-oriented strategies (for example, by providing additional bonus levels or items in the gameplay for a fee); finally, no evidence was found for any claims of sales displacement in the other market sectors. According to the

European Digital Rights European Digital Rights (EDRi) is an international advocacy group headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. EDRi is a network collective of non-profit organizations (NGO), experts, advocates and academics working to defend and advance digital rights ...

association, the study may have been censored: specifically, as of 2018, the European Commission has not published the results, except in the part where the film industry was found to be adversely affected by illegal content consumption. Access to the study was requested and obtained by

Member of the European Parliament A Member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the ECSC) first met in 1952, its ...

Felix Reda. In relation to computer software, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) claimed in its 2011 piracy study: "Public opinion continues to support intellectual property (IP) rights: Seven PC users in 10 support paying innovators to promote more technological advances." Following consultation with experts on copyright infringement, the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) clarified in 2010 that "estimating the economic impact of IP ntellectual propertyinfringements is extremely difficult, and assumptions must be used due to the absence of data", while "it is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify the net effect of counterfeiting and piracy on the economy as a whole." The U.S. GAO's 2010 findings regarding the great difficulty of accurately gauging the economic impact of copyright infringement was reinforced within the same report by the body's research into three commonly cited estimates that had previously been provided to U.S. agencies. The GAO report explained that the sources – a

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice ...

(FBI) estimate, a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) press release and a Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association estimate – "cannot be substantiated or traced back to an underlying data source or methodology." Deaner explained the importance of rewarding the "investment risk" taken by motion picture studios in 2014:

Usually movies are hot because a distributor has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars promoting the product in print and TV and other forms of advertising. The major Hollywood studios spend millions on this process with marketing costs rivaling the costs of production. They are attempting then to monetise through returns that can justify the investment in both the costs of promotion and production.

Motion picture industry estimates

In 2008, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) reported that its six major member companies lost US$6.1 billion to piracy. A 2009 ''Los Angeles Daily News'' article then cited a loss figure of "roughly $20 billion a year" for Hollywood studios. According to a 2013 article in ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'', industry estimates in the United States range between $6.1B to $18.5B per year. In an early May 2014 article in ''The Guardian'', an annual loss figure of US$20.5 billion was cited for the movie industry. The article's basis is the results of a University of Portsmouth study that only involved Finnish participants, aged between seven and 84. The researchers, who worked with 6,000 participants, stated: "Movie pirates are also more likely to cut down their piracy if they feel they are harming the industry compared with people who illegally download music". However, a study conducted on data from sixteen countries between 2005 and 2013, many of which had enacted anti-piracy measures to increase box office revenues of movies, found no significant increases in any markets attributable to policy interventions, which calls into doubt the claimed negative economic effects of digital piracy on the film industry.

Software industry estimates

Psion Software claimed in 1983 that software piracy cost it £2.9 million a year, 30% of its revenue. Will Wright said that ''

Raid on Bungeling Bay ''Raid on Bungeling Bay'' is a shoot 'em up video game developed by Will Wright and published by Broderbund for the Commodore 64 in 1984. It was the first video game designed by Will Wright. The Commodore 64 version was published in the UK by A ...

'' sold 20,000 copies for the Commodore 64 in the US, but 800,000 cartridges for the

Nintendo Famicom The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) is an 8-bit third-generation home video game console produced by Nintendo. It was first released in Japan in 1983 as the commonly known as the The NES, a redesigned version, was released in American ...

with a comparable installed base in Japan, "because it's a cartridge system othere's virtually no piracy". According to a 2007 BSA and International Data Corporation (IDC) study, the five countries with the highest rates of software piracy were: 1.

Armenia Armenia (), , group=pron officially the Republic of Armenia,, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.The UNbr>classification of world regions places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook , , and ''O ...

(93%); 2.

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mo ...

(92%); 3.

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of th ...

(92%); 4.

Moldova Moldova ( , ; ), officially the Republic of Moldova ( ro, Republica Moldova), is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Romania to the west and Ukraine to the north, east, and south. The unrecognised state of Transnistri ...

(92%); and 5.

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and ...

(91%). According to the study's results, the five countries with the lowest piracy rates were: 1. the U.S. (20%); 2.

Luxembourg Luxembourg ( ; lb, Lëtzebuerg ; french: link=no, Luxembourg; german: link=no, Luxemburg), officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, ; french: link=no, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg ; german: link=no, Großherzogtum Luxemburg is a small lan ...

(21%); 3. New Zealand (22%); 4. Japan (23%); and 5.

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

(25%). The 2007 report showed that the Asia-Pacific region was associated with the highest amount of loss, in terms of U.S. dollars, with $14,090,000, followed by the European Union, with a loss of $12,383,000; the lowest amount of U.S. dollars was lost in the Middle East/Africa region, where $2,446,000 was documented. In its 2011 report, conducted in partnership with IDC and Ipsos Public Affairs, the BSA stated: "Over half of the world's personal computer users – 57 percent – admit to pirating software." The ninth annual "BSA Global Software Piracy Study" claims that the "commercial value of this shadow market of pirated software" was worth US$63.4 billion in 2011, with the highest commercial value of pirated PC software existent in the U.S. during that time period (US$9,773,000). According to the 2011 study, Zimbabwe was the nation with the highest piracy rate, at 92%, while the lowest piracy rate was present in the U.S., at 19%. The GAO noted in 2010 that the BSA's research up until that year defined "piracy as the difference between total installed software and legitimate software sold, and its scope involved only packaged physical software."

Music industry estimates

In 2007, the Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) reported that music piracy took $12.5 billion from the U.S. economy. According to the study, musicians and those involved in the recording industry are not the only ones who experience losses attributed to music piracy. Retailers have lost over a billion dollars, while piracy has resulted in 46,000 fewer production-level jobs and almost 25,000 retail jobs. The U.S. government was also reported to suffer from music piracy, losing $422 million in tax revenue. A 2007 study in the ''

Journal of Political Economy The ''Journal of Political Economy'' is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal published by the University of Chicago Press. Established by James Laurence Laughlin in 1892, it covers both theoretical and empirical economics. In the past, the ...

'' found that the effect of music downloads on legal music sales was "statistically indistinguishable from zero". A report from 2013, released by the European Commission Joint Research Centre suggests that illegal music downloads have almost no effect on the number of legal music downloads. The study analyzed the behavior of 16,000 European music consumers and found that although music piracy negatively affects offline music sales, illegal music downloads had a positive effect on legal music purchases. Without illegal downloading, legal purchases were about two percent lower. The study has received criticism, particularly from the

International Federation of the Phonographic Industry The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is the organisation that represents the interests of the recording industry worldwide. It is a non-profit members' organisation registered in Switzerland and founded in Italy in 1 ...

, which believes the study is flawed and misleading. One argument against the research is that many music consumers only download music illegally. The IFPI also points out that music piracy affects not only online music sales but also multiple facets of the music industry, which is not addressed in the study.

Media industry estimates

In a March 2019 article, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' reported that the Qatar-based

beIN Media Group beIN Media Group ( /ˈbiːɪn/; Arabic: مجموعة بي إن الإعلامية‎, ''Majmū‘at Bī’in al-I‘lāmiyyah'') is a state-owned global sport and entertainment network headquartered in Doha, Qatar. beIN distributes entertain ...

suffered "billions of dollars" of losses, following the unilateral cancellation of an exclusive contract it shared with the

Asian Football Confederation The Asian Football Confederation is the governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal in some countries/territories in Asia and Oceania. It has 47 member countries most of which are located in Asia. Australia, formerly ...

(AFC) for the past 10 years. The decision by the AFC to invalidate its license for broadcasting rights to air games in

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the Ara ...

came after the kingdom was accused of leading a piracy operation through its television broadcaster, beoutQ, misappropriating sports content owned by beIN Sports since 2017, worth billions of dollars. In January 2020, the

released a report on protection and enforcement of intellectual property rights in third countries. The report named as many as 13 countries, including Argentina, Brazil, China, Ecuador, India,

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Gui ...

, and Saudi Arabia, the last being included for the first time. The report said piracy is "causing considerable harm to EU businesses" and high economic losses have occurred in Argentina, China, Ecuador and India. It also informed Saudi Arabia has not "taken sufficient steps to stop the infringement" caused via BeoutQ, like other countries have, to minimize the extent of financial and economic loss.

Criticism of industry estimates

Some claims made by industry representatives have been criticized as overestimating the monetary loss caused by copyright infringement. In one example, the

RIAA The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/ ...

claimed damages against LimeWire totaling $75 trillion – more than the global GDP – with the judge overseeing the case ruling that such claims were "absurd". The $75 trillion figure had been obtained by counting each song downloaded as an infringement of copyright. After the conclusion of the case, LimeWire agreed to pay $105 million to RIAA. In another decision, US District Court Judge

James P. Jones James Parker Jones (born July 3, 1940) is an American lawyer and jurist serving as a Senior status, senior United States federal judge, United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia and a Jud ...

found that the "RIAA's request problematically assumes that every illegal download resulted in a lost sale", indicating profit/loss estimates were likely extremely off. Critics of industry estimates argue that those who use peer-to-peer sharing services, or practice "piracy" are actually more likely to pay for music. A Jupiter Research study in 2000 found that "Napster users were 45 percent more likely to have increased their music purchasing habits than online music fans who don't use the software were." This indicated that users of peer-to-peer sharing did not hurt the profits of the music industry, but in fact may have increased it. Professor Aram Sinnreich, in his book ''The Piracy Crusade'', states that the connection between declining music sales and the creation of peer to peer file sharing sites such as Napster is tenuous, based on correlation rather than causation. He argues that the industry at the time was undergoing artificial expansion, what he describes as a perfect bubble'—a confluence of economic, political, and technological forces that drove the aggregate value of music sales to unprecedented heights at the end of the twentieth century". Sinnreich cites multiple causes for the

economic bubble An economic bubble (also called a speculative bubble or a financial bubble) is a period when current asset prices greatly exceed their intrinsic valuation, being the valuation that the underlying long-term fundamentals justify. Bubbles can be c ...

, including the CD format replacement cycle; the shift from music specialty stores to wholesale suppliers of music and 'minimum advertised pricing'; and the economic expansion of 1991–2001. He believes that with the introduction of new digital technologies, the bubble burst, and the industry suffered as a result.

Economic impact of infringement in emerging markets

The 2011 Business Software Alliance Piracy Study Standard estimated the total commercial value of illegally copied software to be at $59 billion in 2010, with emerging markets accounting for $31.9 billion, over half of the total. Furthermore, mature markets for the first time received fewer PC shipments than emerging economies in 2010. In addition with software infringement rates of 68 percent comparing to 24 percent of mature markets, emerging markets thus possessed the majority of the global increase in the commercial value of counterfeit software. China continued to have the highest commercial value of such software at $8.9 billion among developing countries and second in the world behind the US at $9.7 billion in 2011. In 2011, the Business Software Alliance announced that 83 percent of software deployed on PCs in Africa had been pirated (excluding South Africa). Some countries distinguish corporate piracy from private use, which is tolerated as a welfare service. This is the leading reason developing countries refuse to accept or respect copyright laws.

Traian Băsescu Traian Băsescu (; born 4 November 1951) is a conservative Romanian politician who served as President of Romania from 2004 to 2014. Prior to his presidency, Băsescu served as Romanian Minister of Transport on multiple occasions between 1991 ...

, the president of Romania, stated that "piracy helped the young generation discover computers. It set off the development of the IT industry in Romania."Nathan Davis (5 February 2007)
"Thanks for letting us pirate"
'' APC Magazine''.

Pro-free-culture organizations

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed under copyleft ( ...

(FSF) *

Open Source Initiative The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is the steward of the Open Source Definition, the set of rules that define open source software. It is a California public-benefit nonprofit corporation, with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. The organization wa ...

(OSI) *

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. The foundation was formed on 10 July 1990 by John Gilmore, John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor to promote Internet ...

(EFF) *

Creative Commons Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...

(CC) *

Demand Progress Demand Progress is an internet activist-related entity encompassing a 501(c)4 arm sponsored by the Sixteen Thirty Fund and a 501(c)3 arm sponsored by the New Venture Fund. It specializes in online-intensive and other grassroots activism to support ...

* Fight for the Future *

Pirate Party Pirate Party is a label adopted by political parties around the world. Pirate parties support civil rights, direct democracy (including e-democracy) or alternatively participation in government, reform of copyright and patent law, free shari ...

* Plan S, by major funders of scientific research

Anti-copyright-infringement organizations

* Business Software Alliance (BSA) *

Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft The Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft (CAAST) is a Canadian trade group affiliated with the Software Alliance (formerly known as the Business Software Alliance).

(CAAST) * Entertainment Software Association (ESA) *

Federation Against Copyright Theft The Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) is an organisation established in 1983 to protect and represent the interests of its members' intellectual property (IP). FACT also investigates fraud and cybercrime, and provides global due diligenc ...

(FACT) *

Federation Against Software Theft The Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) is a not-for-profit organisation, formed in 1984 with the aim of eliminating copyright infringement of software in the UK. FAST was the world's first Anti-piracy organisation to work on protecting the ...

(FAST) *

International Intellectual Property Alliance The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), formed in 1984, is a private sector coalition of seven trade associations representing U.S. companies that produce copyright-protected material, including computer software, films, televisi ...

(IIPA) * Copyright Alliance

References

External links

* {{Copyright law by country Infringement Organized crime Organized crime activity Tort law * File sharing