Piracy gains as the economy loses

As the Russian economy keeps sinking, who stands to benefit? Apparently, the film and music pirates.  MosNews reports that the sales of bootleg CDs and DVDs in Russia have recently increased from 70 to 80 percent (this despite the recent news that 17 million people worldwide stopped buying CDs  last year) Perhaps, it’s high time ...

As the Russian economy keeps sinking, who stands to benefit? Apparently, the film and music pirates.  MosNews reports that the sales of bootleg CDs and DVDs in Russia have recently increased from 70 to 80 percent (this despite the recent news that 17 million people worldwide stopped buying CDs  last year)

As the Russian economy keeps sinking, who stands to benefit? Apparently, the film and music pirates.  MosNews reports that the sales of bootleg CDs and DVDs in Russia have recently increased from 70 to 80 percent (this despite the recent news that 17 million people worldwide stopped buying CDs  last year)

Perhaps, it’s high time that the Kremlin bureaucrats go read a recent report by the RAND corporation "Film Piracy, Organized Crime, and Terrorism", which, in more than 180 pages, tries to establish a relationship between the sales of bootleg DVDs and the financing of modern terrorism (never mind that the study itself was funded by The Motion Picture Association, the European counterpart to the Motion Picture Association of America, not a very disinterested party).

Evgeny Morozov is a fellow at the Open Society Institute and sits on the board of OSI's Information Program. He writes the Net Effect blog on ForeignPolicy.com

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