Rethinking Piracy

Mexico, Russia and China are the countries with the highest rates of illegal copies of music and movies; this fact is usually known as Piracy. I come from Mexico City, if you have been there before, surely you remember the vendors offering pirate movies and music on the main streets, in the metro and on the buses.  There is a large supply of piracy because there is a large demand of these products.

In the last years, the biggest chains of movie theaters had launched campaigns to make aware people that buying piracy they foster delinquency and break out property rights. As well, the International Intellectual Property Alliance profits each opportunity for claiming to the Mexican government to enforce the law appliance and to prosecute the “pirates”; The Mexican government had done improvements during the past years.  However, buying piracy in Mexico continues to be a widely extended practice.

I know that Piracy breaks out property rights and from a moral and law perspective is wrong, but I want to appeal you to look at this problem in a different way.  The largest consumers of Piracy are the urban people from the base of the economic pyramid (BOP). They can afford the price of buying a DVD player for the family, but they cannot pay for original movies; they can either pay for tickets for all the family for the movie theater.  Much less they can buy an Ipod or to go dinner outside to a restaurant. In resume, the only leisure time they can have is through the radio or the public television. 

Inequality makes the problem worst.  In countries with high disparities in income distribution, such as Mexico, the BOP people see how their rich counterparts have access to a wide range of leisure offers, as movie theaters everywhere, Max screens, ipods, digital music and internet downloads, but they don’t. The only way to have some access is through Piracy.

From a Social Innovation perspective, Piracy would be an opportunity area for social innovators.  Quoting Martin & Osberg’ s first step to have a social entrepreneurship: “identify a stable but inherently unjust equilibrium that causes the exclusion, marginalization or suffering of a segment of humanity that lacks the financial means”.  Well, everybody is losing under the current equilibrium, except the black marketers.  The government loses because the informal economy doesn’t pay taxes. The entertainment industry loses because they are selling nothing to a huge market that is demanding their products. As well, the BOP people is losing too because the quality of the pirate products is not as good as the original ones.

According to Martin & Osberg, the next step would be to forge a new and better equilibrium. Well, why don’t we create a leisure industry for the urban BOP population? Why don’t we bring low cost movie theaters to poverty neighborhoods and poverty belts. For example, in Mexico the entrance to a cinema costs $3.50 dollars and the minimum wage is $4 dollars per day working. The movie theaters in Mexico are usually located at nice shopping malls, have parking, nice seats and sell snacks. Maybe in a joint venture between the movies industry, the government and the nonprofit sector we can build simplest and cheapest movie theaters to offer tickets by 0.50 cents. I know that leisure is not as crucial as education or health services, but in this case it is because is a form of social exclusion of the BOP people that is operating now.