Piracy is among the most prevalent and vexing issues of the digital age.
In just the past decade, it has altered the music industry beyond
recognition, changed the way people watch television, and made a dent in
the buisness of the film and software industries. From MP3 files to
recipes from French celebrity chefs to the jokes of American stand-up
comedians, piracy is ubiquitous. And now piracy can even be an arbiter
of taste, as seen in the decision by Netflix Netherlands to license
heavily pirated shows.
In this unflinching analysis of piracy on the Internet and in the
markets of the Global South, Tilman Baumgärtel brings together a
collection of essays examining the economic, political, and cultural
consequences of piracy. The contributors explore a wide array of topics,
which include materiality and piracy in Rio de Janeiro; informal media
distribution and the film experience in Hanoi, Vietnam; the
infrastructure of piracy in Nigeria; the political economy of copy
protection; and much more. Offering a theoretical background for future
studies of piracy, A Reader in International Media Piracy is an
important collection on the burning issue of the Internet Age.