Intellectual Property Piracy: Perception and Reality in China, the United States, and Elsewhere

Abstract:     
This article is intended as a counterpoint to the all-too-frequent portrayal of China as the world's leading violator of intellectual property rights. In fact, by many measures, China, taken as a whole, is not the leading violator. Some measures show China as the leading violator only because they are aggregates, and do not take into account China's size. When figures are adjusted for population, China's rates of intellectual property violation are lower than those of many other countries, including the United States.

The article first looks at examples of the current round of political and media China-bashing. It then examines figures on international movie piracy provided by the Motion Picture Association (the international counterpart of the Motion Picture Association of America) and compares those figures to the populations of the countries involved. It concludes that the problem of movie piracy is more severe in the U.S. than in China, possibly because of greater broadband access, and more severe still in other countries, including France, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

Keywords: Asia, China, copyright, copyright infringement, East Asia, intellectual property, international, movies, piracy

JEL Classifications: K10, K42

Accepted Paper Series