Media piracy in emerging economies

Joe Karaganis, the UK's Social Science Research Council's Director, headed up a mammoth research project requiring the work of 35 researchers, over three years, entitled: "Media piracy in emerging economies". It has just been published.

The central thesis of this 440 page report is that the reason there is so much piracy in emerging economies - or poor countries - is that people cannot afford the products. It suggests that piracy would fall if pricing was relative to the local ability to pay.

Now, what strikes me about this is that this is being widely reported by major newspapers. They are discussing this like it is some kind of innovative revelation. However, it is notable that I said the same thing, in a blog post, in 2009. My idea and solution were the same as the one that took 35 researchers 3 years to come up with. It took me ten minutes and a blog post.

However, I must say that Joe Karaganis was much more successful in getting notice for his project, than I was for my blog post: the Cause of Piracy in Malaysia

I reported the same idea almost a couple of years before them...but not a single newspaper or other organ picked up on it. I admit that I didn't produce 440 pages of figures to back up the idea...but the idea is the same. It is also a very obvious one, and struck me immediately upon moving to Malaysia and just looking around for a bit.

So, the question is: why is this being reported so widely, as if it were a revelation...? It is a self-evident truth that any careful observer of poorer nations could come up with. It makes me wonder what is happening with social science research, that the subject of a blog post, deserves a team of thirty five researchers, three years and 440 pages. Their conclusion is no different from mine...and yet mine took an instant to observe and a few minutes to write.

Of course, it is possible that one of those researchers actually stumbled on my blog post...but that would be a different story altogether, wouldn't it?

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