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.
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |