Piracy in China.

Congratulations to my brother, as I can now officially call him Doctor Creemers. Yesterday at 2pm, he successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis on copyright infringement in China. He is looking for a way to publish the book he wrote, that complies with the policies of both Maastricht University, where he did the research for his thesis, and Oxford University, where he works now. As soon as there's a way you can get your hands on his work, I'll give him a shoutout here.

For those of you who go tl;dr quickly, his main point comes down to this: The chinese government regulates very strictly what types of media may be distributed. Therefore, the availability of information is low. People see opportunities to obtain, share and sell this information in an illegal way. This reduces profits for organizations that do sell media in a lega fashion, which again leads to a decline in availability, more piracy,... forming a vicious circle. This short explanation doesn't do much justice to the work he has done, but at least it gives an idea of what his thesis is about.

But also outside China, I find the idea of lack of availability of certain media, as a reason for piracy an interesting point to think about. I used to think of the opportunities to save or make money, as the main reason for pirating. I'm looking forward to more interesting works that my brother and others will publish in the future, as internet piracy becomes a very hot topic, with internet usage growing every second. Stopping piracy is a challenge, and the solutions that are currently being suggested such as SOPA are simply not the way to go.