The point should be obvious that enabling free (and illegal) consumption would cut into paid (and legal) consumption. At the heart of these efforts is the collective recognition by all players that digital piracy services are a social and economic harm to the broader creative and digital economy on which they all rely, and they’d all be better off working to make it harder-if not impossible-for them to function.ĭespite what some might claim, digital content piracy remains a significant threat to creative individuals and firms that depend on copyright protection. It should be in the interest of all actors interested in an innovative and prosperous digital economy to have measures in place to stop their goods and services from being used to monetize illegal actions. In this way, voluntary agreements target supply-side factors that make life harder and costlier for piracy operators that otherwise would be left unimpeded to profit from facilitating access to illegal content. These voluntary agreements don’t directly address IP rights enforcement online (such as getting web pages containing infringing material blocked or removed), but rather target key facilitating services and processes that otherwise enable large-scale, commercially driven piracy sites to function as if they were legitimate businesses-which they most definitely are not. The empirical evidence shows these types of firm and government interventions can have a meaningful effect on consumer behavior, while also reducing piracy and increasing legal sales. They differ by country and issue, but all share the common focus on groups of firms coming together to reduce digital piracy-a goal all responsible stakeholders should share. There is no easy, single solution to address the scourge of illegal digital piracy, but voluntary agreements can and should play a key role.ĭigital-piracy-focused voluntary agreements are increasingly common around the world. Experience from the United States, Europe, and elsewhere shows how firms from different parts of the digital economy can work together both to support the marketplace for legal content and to reduce the availability of illegal content. Voluntary agreements between copyright holders and payment processors, advertising networks, domain name registrars, search engines, and others can complement legislative and other efforts to protect creators’ digital intellectual property (IP) from the significant negative impact of piracy. Support for and Opposition to Voluntary Agreements: Civil Society, Academia, and StakeholdersĬonclusion and Recommendation: The More Cooperation and Anti-piracy Tools, the BetterĪppendix A: Arrangements to Address Online IP Infringements Voluntary Agreements and the World Intellectual Property Organization Voluntary Agreements in the Asia-Pacific Region Voluntary Agreements in the United States
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