Digital economy blueprint

9.  Copyright and Intellectual Property: Digital pi-

racy is itself a matter of considerable controversy, 

but by any measure, the sums are immense. While 

it is possible to estimate the order of magnitude of 

unlicensed  software  and  unauthorized  copies  of 

media in use in various countries, it is far more dif-

ficult to determine how many of these pirate ver-

sions would actually have been sold if the users 

had to pay full retail prices. This is especially the 

case with the lowest income countries, where pira-

cy is most widespread in terms of the percentage of 

illicit versus authentic uses. Unless rights owners 

were to offer their products for a fraction of their 

prevailing international prices, it is likely that most 

private users, and even most companies and gov-

ernments in these countries (which also frequently 

use pirated software) would be unable to purchase 

more than a fraction of the material that they cur-

rently obtain through the black market.