I guess that since I've titled my blog "intellectual property rights" I should probably give my take on the topic.. Insofar as my IP textbooks from my days in law skool are concerned, I believe that IPRs, as with most other legal rights, are mostly present to protect big business.. This is bcos oni big business are aware of the many and constant changes in the law, have the resources to acquire the protection, and are able to pay people like me, the huge amounts or money required to enforce those rights..

In fact, big business is probably the oni reason why those rights exist in the 1st place! Why do I say this? Well, simply bcos, as we al know but sometimes dun wanna acknowledge, big business always affects govt policy.. Governments hav to be seen to do something.. n unless u're China, who has e biggest population in the world and who is seen by all as e one country destined for world domination, everyone else is at the mercy of large multi-national corportations.. And if you want these companies to come into your country.. You'd better be doin something to protect their business interests...

So in this sense IPRs are fueled by economic reasons... NOT moral.. (Now I know this sounds rather simplistic an assessment.. esp for a "lawyer".. but I dun hav much time to give a more complete explanation for this.. and its not relevant to what I really wanna talk abt now.. perhaps we'll leave it for later posts..)

I guess what I'm really trying to get at is that the argument that I constantly hear about small businesses being forced out of business by piracy is completely unfounded.. I 1st came across this argument when my pastor's wife explained that she had many friends in the US who's software companies went out of business bcos people copied their software etc.. Now as I gave the topic more thought I've become more skeptical about it (not that I'm calling her a liar or anything.. of cos she's not!).. I believe that perhaps it wasn't as sinister as it appeared..

1stly, as I understand more abt computer softwares, I am fascinated by how many ways there are to produce the same functionality i.e. you can create programs which do the same thing using different methods or programming languages etc (i'm not an expert in this.. but this is what I understand to be true).. So even if someone came up with a similar program/software they may not have copied it..

2ndly, I realised that from an economic point of view.. it simply isn't worth copying something that isn't big or popular enough i.e. a big brand.. Its only profitable if everyone knows of the brand e.g. Microsoft Office would be worth copying bcos everyone knows of the company and product.. and in most case, everyone has to use it.. So pirates would copy those programs rather than wasting their time on e unknown.. small.. software company's offerrings..

This leads me to conclude that the reason why these companies didn't survive was probably not bcos of piracy.. but perhaps it came down to marketing.. They either didn't spend enough time and resources in brand conception and brand awareness.. Perhaps they didn't realise its importance.. perhaps they didn't have the resources.. or perhaps it was just the fact tt e particular mkt was already dominated by a bigger.. better brand..

hmmmm....


(Disclaimer: Rem tt this is by no means an exhaustive discussion of the topic.. nor is it any indication of my actual personal practices.. :P )