Talk:Strategy for Information Markets/Piracy

nice start
This looks like a good outline of your goals. In fact, it might be too comprehensive-I recommend prioritizing (not necessarily here if you don't want, but in your own minds at least) so that if it's too much, you give appropriate attention to the more important aspects rather than diluting your attention over many details. Besides that, I have just a few suggestions.


 * There's much argument about how negative the impact of piracy really is. Be very careful to treat this argument fairly. Industry organizations are likely to over-estimate the losses to piracy, for instance by assuming that every pirated copy of something is a lost sale. On the other side, some piracy apologists argue (frequently without data) that any losses are imaginary, that actually piracy serves as "free advertising" and can increase sales. It might or might not be worth covering both sides of that debate, attributing the arguments to who makes them. However, actually identifying the losses to piracy should rely on careful studies by disinterested parties (likely academics).
 * You should merge the material on the main page and the chapter page so that there isn't duplication.
 * Consider the possible upsides of piracy, or the possible downsides of fighting piracy (thinking in economics terms). This isn't to say that piracy is good, but that how to deal with piracy is a business decision with tradeoffs just like any other.
 * If the product has network externalities, piracy can grow the network, possibly leading to a higher value for other customers (maybe allowing a higher price to be charged to them).
 * Likewise, if a product sold once will actually serve 100 people (99 of them pirates), possibly the price charged for that initial good can be higher.
 * Allowing some degree of piracy can be a sort of price discrimination.
 * There can be "versioning" associated with piracy, in that a pirated version may have degraded quality (a badly-photocopied textbook, software without manuals or tech support...).
 * Taking extreme steps (such as the use of dongles or online verification) to fight piracy can sometimes make your product less appealing to paying customers.TDang (talk) 00:05, 24 September 2010 (UTC)

Also, see chapter 4 of Information Rules for the discussion of "Rights Management" (we'll be reading it for class anyway, so getting familiar earlier will only help you). TDang (talk) 12:15, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Here's an article which is worth reading if trying to assess how much damage is done by piracy:. The article itself has a very sharp slant, so might not be a good source to refer to directly, but it's informative anyway, and points toward other sources. TDang (talk) 11:10, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

ECON 452 first midterm class reviews
Please put your reviews for the class assignment here. you may make your review into a sub-section of this section, or just a paragraph. Make sure the reader can identify your review, and make sure to include your signature. TDang (talk) 00:33, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Review of Piracy
So far the article is well put together and is progressing into a nice section of the book. I like the section 'piracy cases against regular citizens'. I think an interesting addition to this section would be to include cases of piracy between companies. For example, in the mobile device market, there are several lawsuits between companies about copyright infringement. Some interesting cases could include Apple iphone jailbreaking case, and the patent infringment cases of Microsoft vs. Motorola, Motorola vs. Apple, Apple vs. HTC, and Nokia vs. Apple. I suggest highlighting companies that are both suing for piracy and being sued for piracy. For example, Motorola suing Apple, while also being sued by Microsoft. Tomcat122 (talk) 03:01, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Review
This whole page is very informative and I think you have done a great job so far. I like when there is a definition in a sentence or two, you bold the word you are defining. For instance, the way 'industrial piracy' is bolded in the first section, I think that is a good idea. In the direction of this class, there are multiple parts which relate to topics we have covered in class or read about in our book. Good job with that, I would keep going in that direction. I also agree with the person above me, I really like the 'piracy cases against regular citizens' section, it was very interesting to read those. Lastly, I would definitely read over and look for grammar or spelling errors and run-on sentences. Cg12 (talk) 16:15, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Review
Overall I think the group has done a great job with this page. The information is well organized and I don't feel lost while reading it. The group has also listed the areas where they need to add more content. Like the other two reviewers, I found the section on piracy lawsuits against citizens to be interesting. I noticed there was no citation for the information in the section on Russia. It would be interesting to know where that information came from. Some language seems a little too personal, but this may just be my personal preference. For instance, in the section on movies, one sentence starts out with "Now let me start with the first argument." Other than that, I've just noticed a few grammatical errors. This page seems well organized and contains good information that is relevant to the topic which is being discussed. EconLlama (talk) 04:35, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Review
I think this group has a very good start on their topic. The ideas are clear and well organized. The information was also easy to follow and to understand. Perhaps I am missing something but I saw very few citations throughout the entire section. Not only is this important for obvious reasons but it would be interesting to know where much of this information comes from. It is a very interesting subject that I would like to know more about. Furthermore, this group did a nice job relating the information to things we have covered in class. I also noticed that some of the language was somewhat informal which I think distracts slightly from the information presented. Other than some grammatical and spelling errors and some problems with sentence structure, this group has adequately covered the topic at hand. Mswanson (talk) 16:10, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Review
This group is off to a good start. The information they have posted so far, is informative to the reader. It would be good to see where all the data and technical information is derived from. The intellectual property section is detailed well with showing some recent court case examples. However, it would be good to add how/when piracy occurred and elaborate on the software segment of piracy. Is it harder for there to be piracy on software opppose to music and dvd's? If so what are the strategies from the software companies and will other aspects of the media industry implement them. There are a few grammatical errors and the technical jargon of the topic should be defined and consistent. A suggestion would be to develop an appendix/ glossary of the major terms. Overall, any reader will feel something new was learned after reading this article. Cats20 (talk) 17:31, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

TDang review
I'm reviewing this version:

First, I've noticed that a non-class contributor has been helping out on this section a lot. That's how things can go on a wiki. It also means that some of the comments I make may be on material you (the students) haven't written.

effect for consumers in that they can potentially get the thing they want for free or cheaply. According to the reasoning behind intellectual property laws, a major negative would be that consumers couldn't get other products because companies decide it's not worth making them, given the extent of piracy. That's according to the reasoning, I don't know if it's empirically clear that this problem exists. It's not clear that movies have strong network externalities. (Whether or not you watched Inception did not impact how much I enjoyed it.) A case could be made, but that would need to be it's own separate section. It's also not clear how much pirates are the "early adopters" who set the stage for later appreciation. Doesn't a lot of piracy come later in a film's life-cycle, and if so, the arguments here are irrelevant. important so you don't accidentally besmirch someone's name. I'm not positive that I'm correct on phrasing either, so please re-check this and related stuff.
 * Related, I note that there's some concern about the tone of the word "piracy" for the article. I've already intervened in that I believe "piracy" is the appropriate name for the section. I'm unsure about the rest. If it is a concern to you, making a topic on this talk page to discuss it is the way to collaboratively figure out how to handle it.
 * Regardless of whether the term "piracy" needs to be qualified, such qualifications aren't the best way to open the article. They should be moved down to their own section, or integrated more smoothly with the article.
 * "...the general aspect, the industry aspect, the international aspect, and the legal aspect" This is very unclear. Who defines these categories, and are they truly distinct? If you're defining them for the sake of this chapter, you need to be very clear about how you follow them, so the categorization is helpful instead of confusing.
 * "Monetary losses due to copyright infringement can not be directly correlated to the unlicensed number of copies detected, except when dealing with physical counter-faction of the media in consumers hands." A strong assertion like this needs a stronger explanation and a reference to an outside source.
 * "Copyrights is someone's exclusive right to reproduce his original work... " This bit should probably be moved up. A short explanation of what is copyright and why it exists would be a proper part of describing what piracy is.
 * "Who are the stakeholders and what are the effects of piracy on them" It's good that this section is part of the article, but the section needs a lot of work. The various harms need to be carefully considered, and well-documented. For honesty's sake, positive effects of piracy (if any) need to be considered as well.
 * "The negative effect of piracy on customers is the effect it has on a customer’s health, safety, and the product quality." It's not clear where any of these arise from, particularly when talking about digital goods. They may exist, but this needs elaboration and documentation. For honesty's sake, it should be evident that there's a positive
 * "Industries suffer from piracy in terms of lost sales, weakening brand value, and rising intellectual property protection costs which are passed on to the customer." This needs some explanation as well. For instance, why weakening brand value?
 * "The U.S. economy as a whole suffers from piracy do to slower growth and innovation and declining trade with governments that do not enforce intellectual property rights as fiercely as the U.S. does." We're in the U.S., and if the U.S. is all you can manage, then that's OK, but an international approach would be better. Also, these assertions need careful documentation. See this discussion (again).
 * "History of copyright infringement" This section is good. I'm wondering if it would be appropriate to move it up as part of the introduction. Not sure. The section name should be changed, since it's really a history of copyright law, not of infringement.
 * "This is made even more common by the legal alteration that makes it unnecessary to state the ownership of works and the presumption that any work is owned by someone else, removing the indication of any time limits to those rights and making it impossible to distinguish from general public domain." This sentence is very hard to understand, and should maybe be part of another section?
 * Identifying the share of piracy due to "individuals" vs. "organized crime"--there should be statistics, even if imperfect ones available on this. Try to find something trustworthy and reference it.
 * "Unfortunately, despite the efforts to fight it and the alternatives that are being offered, online file sharing remains rampant." This needs to be reconsidered/rephrased. Is there something wrong with online file sharing?
 * "They are also products of an economy of scale, not on the production side but on the consumption side." As long as we're talking information goods, there are usually strong supply-side economies of scale. There are only sometimes demand-side economies of scale. For instance, it's not clear that the Carolina Chocolate Drops CD I bought has any impact on the value of a similar CD to another purchaser.
 * "But the economics of non-physical products, like content or concepts is completely different, as it relates directly to demand, visibility and uniqueness. A non-physical product has distinct properties. For instance, it cannot be scarce unless scarcity is artificially created by exerting control on distribution." This kind of material could also be a good part of an introduction-why is there copyright protection?
 * "...such as giving away free samples of your product instead of castigating those who are able to find ways to access your product for free." There are business models which include giving stuff away for free, but they need to be justified, otherwise it just sounds like voluntarily losing money.
 * "...evolved into one of first online public large scale copyright infringement engines, mostly due to the lack of alternatives created by the music industry." This is too strong, in both directions. "copyright infringement engine" is very loaded, and "due to the lack of..." is an unknown (unless you can find someone who proves it).
 * "On the other hand, however, piracy increases the legitimate sales...." This entire paragraph reads as supposition, and pretty strong supposition. It needs some kind of support from outside sources, either hard analysis/data to back it up, or attributing it to a less-hard analyst who makes those arguments. A couple objections:
 * ...and as I say that, I come across a mention of Hui and Png. It might be that a lot can come from that. You need to be explicit with your reference, and where you use it. Exactly what is the reference? Do they argue for network externalities? etc. Anyway, looks like a good source. Using Google Scholar to see who else refers to the paper may help you find other good sources.
 * Trademarks: Trademark infringement is often thrown in with copyright infringement. For most of our purposes, it's a completely different thing, and should be ignored. Patent infringement is closer to copyright infringement, and could possibly be a concern for the article, but patent infringement is less specific to information goods, so... not sure it's worth covering. Maybe.
 * The "International Aspect" section relies too heavily on the BSA and the Congressional International Anti-Piracy Caucus, neither of which you'd expect to be objective.
 * Legal stuff: See this edit and this edit which I did. If talking about legal stuff, being careful is

General comments: You've got a lot of good stuff, but it also needs a lot of polish. If you continue in this vein, then you'll have even more good stuff, but still need a lot of polish. If you did that, but also fixed things which were truly wrong, then this would be a very good contribution, even though someone else would need to come back and clean it up. Alternatively, you could add very little, and concentrate on the cleaning up, and that would also be a very good contribution.

If you decide to take the cleaning-up approach, remember that this is should be economics-focused. If you can gather the relevant economic ideas into cohesive sections, that would help. For instance, using simple models of control like in Information Rules, being clear from the outset that a pirated copy isn't necessarily a lost sale (which you could do with a simple demand plot), talking about how IP rights give the owner monopoly power and that power is intended to motivate more IP creation. If you take a careful analytical approach to cleaning up, that should also help with deciding how to note how bad "piracy" truly is. TDang (talk) 17:10, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

2nd Midterm Review
You have all done a great job of providing a broad review of Piracy. It really provided me with a lot of knowledge about the industry that I did not know. It seems you for the most part have a good idea of what you need to do (assumption on the basis of the "to-do" notes). I feel the section entitled, "How it is done" needs some expanding and clarifying, maybe in language that is not overwhelming to non-technologically adept readers. I question whether some musicians actually benefit from piracy, namely those who have already "made it." If you already have the publicity, is it really beneficial to lose potential profits from record sales? I also know that there is a petition led by several artists like Billy Corgan who are claiming they want compensation for every time their song is played on the radio (maybe an idea to delve into). Also the section of Movie Watchers, I think should be expanded into Consumers of Media. Of course movies are experience goods, but isn't music and software also. Plus, everybody wants free stuff always. As always, the section could use some polishing because there are run-on/confusing sentences such as the 2nd sentence. I fixed a few grammatical errors, but probably missed some. Other than these personal opinions, great job. Greeko (talk) 19:04, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Review #2
Everything looks really good! I agree with the review above mine that you do have some run on sentences and a few are pretty wordy an hard to understand. So you might want to read through it slowly and touch it up. But I found your paper to be quite interesting. I noticed you only mentioned Limewire once, maybe you could talk about how they were recently shut down (just this past week) and who filed the lawsuits against them. Just an idea. But overall great work!Poppy1 (talk) 03:18, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Please put your reviews for the class assignment here. You may make your review into a sub-section of this section, or just a paragraph. Make sure the reader can identify your review, and make sure to include your signature.TDang (talk) 17:26, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

2nd Review
I also agree with the two reviews above. There are a few grammatical errors and long sentences, so I would recommend changing those. I do like that you discuss piracy laws, etc in other countries. I would like if you could elaborate on this some more though. What are some countries that have the strictest copyright laws? Whose are the most lenient? Another suggestion that you might want to add: I read an article just the other day about a woman who was fined something like a million dollars for downloading 24 songs. I don't remember too much about it, but this could be used for a VERY recent example. Other than these few suggestions, I think you are overall doing a good job! Lobbster (talk)

2nd Review
I really enjoyed this section of the wikibook. Your sections discussing foreign laws on piracy is in particular very intriguing. I would expand on this section if possible by adding how other countries challenge piracy and how they have been in effectiveness. Perhaps how perceptions morally and ethically of piracy vary country to country. I would also like to see more case study material regarding how the law in America is sometimes exercised to the fullest. In general, this section of the book is very well organized and a fantastically researched section, keep up the good work! Jls324 (talk) 23:00, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

TDang review

 * the "erroneously referred to as piracy" bit is unnecessary (and I expect it didn't come from one of your group, but...) It is the common term for the thing, and even then "piracy" in the intellectual property sense is different than some other forms of copyright infringement. (It's copyright infringement if I were to sing a Prince song at a public performance without getting permission to do so, but it wouldn't be called pircy.)
 * "but it is not a recent trend in fact copying and sharing predates copyright laws and it is intrinsic to human interactions. Human culture has always been acquired by replication and transmission" There's a few things in here which need references or explanation.
 * The part about predating copyright law is certainly true, and there was obviously piracy (whether called that or not) long before digital technology. An example of early copyright violations could be fit into the history bit.
 * The part about copying and sharing being intrinsic and culture being acquired by replication and transmission may be true, but it's going astray from the point of the section.
 * "Monetary losses due to copyright infringement can not be directly correlated to the unlicensed number of copies detected" This is still important, and still needs referencing.
 * "The negative effect of piracy on customers is the effect it has in restricting their ability to freely enjoy or share information goods." Huh? Piracy gives users the absolute ability to (illegally) enjoy and share stuff. Copyright protection has those negative effects on consumers, so this is backwards.
 * "The negative effects of piracy are well known and well documented..." This paragraph says things which I believe are true, but needs to be more solid. It needs sources, and specific (sourced) numbers would be good if those numbers aren't completely bogus. If the studies are suspect, they can still be reported here, but wlso with reference to criticisms of them.
 * Musicians and writers benefitting: The stuff written there isn't clearly wrong. There's good arguments in it for writers and musicians following strategies of allowing their material to be widely consumed. However, if a musician puts up a song and says, "copy and share this as much as you like", that's not piracy. Piracy is the illegal/unauthorized copying. If a musician thinks that wide copying is beneficial (and you shuld find specifics if discussing this), then they would set things up so that wide copying was allowed. (If there's a conflict between an artist and a publisher, that's more of a contract issue than what's discussed here.) Similar for writers.
 * Movies, pracy, and experience goods--actually stalking about piracy and how it relates to experience goods is an interesting way to go. As before, more detail, carefulness, references.
 * "Users of P2P networking technology ... didn=92t think that sharing digital files over the..." They didn't? Who says? I think a lot of them did. There's a difference between what was argued by pundits and in legal battles versus what people believed. Furthermore, some people will engange in piracy while not feeling that it's morally wrong, but still recognize it as "piracy".
 * " theft of intellectual property in all its manifestations" While I think "piracy" is the appropriate term because of it's common usage, "theft" is still a srong and contentious word for copyright violations, so it should only be used if it's being attributed to someone, otherwise a more neutral term should be used.
 * " They are deploying tactics such as encoding to inhibit the reproduction of music and digital video discs and other copyrighted materials" Congress is doing that?
 * "Enforcing Piracy Laws" section-it seems like everything there is already elsewhere, so it could be removed.
 * "Copyrights are someone's exclusive rights to exert ownership over their original work" This should be moved to near the top, not the bottom.

General comments: I need to revise what I said after the first mid-term review. There are still some points from that review which need addressing, and you should do so. However, mostly what this article needs now is very careful clean-up with references. There are a lot of assertions without enough detail or attribution to know what to think of them. Second to those things, adding a little bit of simple demand/pricing modeling would be good, both to show the reasoning for why high pricing is important for information goods, and also to show why a pirated copy of something is not the same as a lost sale. TDang (talk) 18:48, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Piracy as a marketing and leverage tool
I would like to read something more on the intentional use of unlicensed software or the use of permissive licensing or technologies as a way to take market share from the competition and the implications regarding heightened visibility or as a way to establish habits on the consumer. Examples would be the music industry and radio or Microsoft practices ( [slashdot.org story] ). The same is valid in patents permit abuse of the IP and at a later time sue for compensation or the way preemptive patenting/patent consortiums are damaging innovation. --Panic (talk) 23:39, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

This is similar to the results obtained by penetration pricing or predatory pricing. Specially on computer hardware and software. For instance piracy of software was a deciding factor on establishing the surviving computer platforms we have today, the same is also true in a lower degree to how consoles conquer market. Permissibility of IP infringement can also be temporary (revisions of operative systems or changes to the hardware) can at a later time shape the level of abuse. This powerful market shaping tool is ultimately validated by how open systems seem to increasingly gather public support, even at times that no commercial interests are behind them. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 00:43, 2 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Yep, it seems clear that a fair amount of piracy is winked at, as a kind of penetration pricing and/or price discrimination, to grow the network and make the full-price versions of the product more valuable. Based on only casual observation, I've noticed this particularly in high-end software like expensive mathematical software and 3D design software and the like, where the copyright owner knows that the people fiddling with it make the product more valuable to the business customers, but that when the business customers get it, their legal department will make them pay for it. Having better-than-anecdotal stories to go with this would be terrific. TDang (discuss • contribs) 00:58, 2 May 2012 (UTC)


 * I doubt that we could get anything detailed on this type of issue. Probably the case about MS bundling the OS with new machines, how it took monopolistic contours and how liberal MS is in the control of this type of licenses. I never heard anyone from the industry fully admit taking advantage of piracy as tool, it would be a PR nightmare (if not legal).
 * Another example would be for instance the iPhone prototypes that are consistently forgotten at bars :) --Panic (discuss • contribs) 01:09, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

TDang review April 2012
I'm reviewing this version. I'll likely be more critical than complimentary, because (a) that's the way I am and (b) that's what will help improve things. Please don't take the criticism-over-compliments to mean I have a wholly negative view.

Make sure to check the all-purpose review thoughts as well.

TDang (discuss • contribs) 00:00, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * I moved a block of stuff from the Intellectual Property Page which was better suited to this page, although that may create some redundancy, which should be cleaned up.
 * Introduction
 * Copyright infringement is a much broader term than piracy (which is still probably too broad a term, but anyway...) Copyright infringement can include creating a book which is based on the characters in Harry Potter, but doing that wouldn't be described as piracy. Piracy is mostly limited to direct, illegal copying of copyrighted works. This can include copying for personal use, sharing, or large-scale commercial copying to sell on the black market.
 * The definition of bootlegging is fun, but doesn't belong in the introduction. It could be moved elsewhere.
 * Counterfeiting is mostly about trademark violations, and just as we won't focus much on trademarks for the intellectual property stuff in this book, it's not worth dwelling on counterfeiting here.
 * But there should be an introduction, so some material should get pulled up or created to fill this space.
 * "Without property rights, people would be able to copy anything without being held liable and there would be fewer incentives for new inventions and technology to be created."--this is part of the underlying justification for intellectual property, but I don't think it should be outright asserted as true. Instead, rephrase it as part of the goal/intent of intellectual property protection.
 * "However, Intellectual property includes four different types..." Don't go into this. This page should focus (almost) exclusively on copyrights, so don't spend time on the other stuff.
 * History of copyright law--This should be moved to the intellectual property page, except for the material on the DMCA which was specifically oriented around piracy.
 * "Even more problematic is the legal alteration that removes the obligation to clearly indicate copyright ownership."--It's not obvious this is a problem. If it is, it should be described by referencing someone who describes it as a problem and giving more context. It probably also belongs more onthe intellectual preoperty page than here. (The sentence immediately following it goes along, too.)
 * "Piracy is done on two levels:"--This should probably get a section to itself.
 * "Large websites that index BitTorrents, such as The Pirate Bay, are considered by most of the publishing and entertainment industry as large scale criminal organizations..." This and the following stuff describes an important debate, but that debate needs to be referenced to someone.
 * Definition of Piracy--This section makes some good points, but those points need to be made differently:
 * "Piracy" is the currently clearest term for this particular type of copyright infringement. If we think it's a poor term, then perhaps a "sidebar" kind of section just pointing out that sharing music with your sister is not the same as taking hostages on a ship on the high seas, but it should not be dwelled on.
 * It is very important to make clear somewhere in here that the economic loss to piracy does not equal the face value of the number of copies pirated. If a DVD sells for $20 and there are a million pirated copies, probably a significant fraction of those million copies go to people who would never have spent $20 on the DVD anyway. So, a pirated copy does not equal a lost sale. Only some of the pirated copies are lost sales. This confusion makes estimates of the losses to piracy tricky, and media companies will frequently give inflated numbers to make the impact of piracy sounds worse than it is.
 * "Those aspects include the general aspect, the industry aspect, the legal aspect and the international aspect."--I think this is a leftover from previous text that no longer makes sense.
 * "In order of degree of prevalence, these goods consist of music, movies, photos or electronic books."--This is very interesting, if true, but needs a reference to show that it's true. It also should identify whether "prevalence" means number of copies, number of pirates, value of the copies, or what.
 * "However, if there are negative effects, then there must be some people that feel the positive effects of piracy. The question becomes: who benefits from piracy?"--These phrases don't add anything. But also the primary answer to the question "who benefits from piracy" is "people who get stuff cheap or free". It doesn't need a lot of extra analysis, at least in the context of that question. Mostly this paragraph can go away.
 * However, one interesting bit is at the end of the paragraph: "allowing customers to save money, ignore DRM, and registration or format limitations". The implication is that sometimes a pirated copy is more valuable to a consumer than a legitimate copy because the pirated copy might be "more open" than a legitimate copy. That snippet should stick around, and either be more developed or wait to be further developed later.
 * "Piracy does another important thing for customers: lowering the cost of experience goods."--This is good, but could possibly be expanded to work on the implication that some copyright owners might "trn a blind eye" to piracy in order to allow the consumers to get a sample of the good--like a "freemium" business model, but with weirder legal overtones.
 * Musicians--It should not be too hard to find prominent musicians speaking on both sides of how they feel about piracy. Examples would be extremely helpful here.
 * Movie watchers--I don't think this section adds a lot in its current form.
 * What are the motivations?--I think this section should be removed. Some of it can be moved elsewhere, such as #1 moving to discussion of large-scale commercial piracy, #4 moving to ... somewhere.
 * Who is "Charles W. Moore", where can we find what he wrote, and is he actually someone we should listen to?
 * "An estimated 2.6 billion music files are downloaded through P2P networks each month"--These numbers should be referenced, and should be phrased so that they're still true when this book is older, something like "As of 2012, an estimated..."
 * Industry Aspect--Most of this paragraph can be removed, with two bits which should stay and be used elsewhere:
 * "The consumer of the unlicensed duplicate does not contribute to the high initial costs of production"--Part of this analysis should be based on that idea--when is piracy enough of a drain on profits that it makes it unprofitable to create the film/music/software/book in the first place?
 * "some of the approaches including the use of digital rights management (DRM), that not only increases the price of the goods but makes its utilization harder and prone to technical problems"--That can go along with the bit mentioned earlier about how pirated stuff might actually be better for the consumer because it's easier to use. In fact, a section on the drawbacks in terms of product value due to copyright-protection efforts would be good.
 * Goals for managing intellectual property--This should move to the Intellectual Property page.
 * Control over demand--Without a lot of elaboration, this section doesn't make sense and should be removed.
 * Industries Effected-Music--Since this is about piracy, the history part of this should mention how the music industry responded to piracy via cassette tapes. But overall, this section is good and could be moved to near the top of the page as part of introducing the whole idea.
 * The Napster effect--This, also, as part of the history, could fit well near the beginning of the page.
 * "mostly due to the lack of alternatives created by the music industry."--How do you know that?
 * "piracy increases the legitimate sales of the movie product through the impact of network externalities and the diffusion of information and forces an increase in general quality"--These are strong assertions. It's not clear that network externalities are important for movies, or why piracy should cause movies to get better.
 * Literature--This section badly needs references.
 * References
 * There are some good references at the bottom of the page. If they can be given as in-line references, it would be better.
 * References to the MPAA and RIAA top-level of the organizations' web sites aren't helpful by themselves. If you're using material from them, link directly to where that material is.
 * http://lowendmac.com doesn't look like a good reference.


 * "Counterfeiting is mostly about trademark violations" does not seem correct, it impacts both, it is an IP violation and brand abuse.
 * Trademark is about brand and image, and while counterfeiting primarily explores the brand recognition it is in most cases also the violation of patents and copyrights. Trademark issues also arise in the software world. It is also not uncommon for software licenses to include clauses that are very similar (in the limitations imposed) to a trademark protection.
 * In case of piracy all large scale operations are done counterfeiting operations. It is also interesting to note that while there is an increase in public indifference to piracy in general, counterfeiting operations have always been seen as criminal and reprovable.
 * Another interesting connotation with piracy is that high sea piracy was mostly a state sponsored operation. Even if more common a few years ago, today emergent markets (and third world countries) still engage in state sponsored counterfeiting operations because local brands have no global recognition, this is done even in simpler aspects of IP like image and design up to pharmaceutics. This type of piracy is akin to IP nationalization :) --Panic (discuss • contribs) 00:33, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * It makes sense that you say counterfeiting and copyright/trademark violations often go hand-in-hand (although a lot of the most prominent cases of counterfeiting are things like fashion items which are protected only by trademark and not other IP). Trademark and copyright can be entangled-sometimes deliberately entangled by a company which owns the trademark and the copyright and tries to use whichever of those is strongest in particular circumstances to keep control. However, I'm aiming for a clean economics text, and trademark gets murky too fast, whereas patents and copyrights can be dealt with as very similar things. If including counterfeiting is important, then I think the place to do it would be as a brief mention in the place where large-scale commercial piracy is discussed. TDang (discuss • contribs) 01:02, 2 May 2012 (UTC)
 * A middle ground approach would be to move the superfluous content to another work and link it there from here, providing the indication (as you are giving) why the writers felt it was not interesting, this in itself useful. --Panic (discuss • contribs) 01:14, 2 May 2012 (UTC)