April 29, 2004

Gorbushka/горбушка

Gorbushka is the largest market of pirated DVDs and CDs in the world. It is, by everyoness account, awesome. The number of music vendors in one place is stupefying. The discs usually cost between 3 and 5 dollars.
I have bought and MP3 player and have bought all kinds of music for cheap. I got the complete work of Many Chau and Mano Negra (11 albums on 1 mp3 for 100 Roubles) and all of Beethovens Sonatas on the other. Last week I also noted that The Passion and The Dreamers were on sale in all the DVD stores, and I saw the whole Adobe Acrobat suite for $2.50.

The Moscow Times, with some hint hint US, backing is trying get it shut down. The problems of pirated music are rampant, but it strikes me as only fair that Russians should be able to buy cheap music as well. They dont have the hot DVD/CD burning technology, which most Americans have and make ample use of. Just because Russians arent as wealthy and dont have the luxury of buying and iPod shouldn't deprive them of things Westerners have. In addition, the outrageous prices the some companies charge for software are certainly unfair to developing countriesletting only Western companies be able to afford such software.

That said, how to deal with intellectual property rights is of huge concern. Surely, a country that cannot protect intellectual property rights, will have a huge problem in developing their economy. In a recent move, many music sellers are talking about lowering their prices in order to compete with the pirated music vendors. Perhaps this is a step in the right directionthough it is interesting that this moves comes only from market pressure from illegal vendors.
Posted by Aaron at April 29, 2004 02:13 PM

Comments
Post a comment