A major concern of mine about our current Intellectual Property regime is its impact on creativity. When you lock down culture as firmly as it is at the moment you stifle creativity. Add to that the incredible remixing of culture that the digital age has allowed us and limits seem almost oppressive and shift from protection of intellectual property to protection of profit.
So I’m far more focused on digital mediums like music and video than I am on books which, to my mind, haven’t been overly affected by the digital age. People still like to hold a book (I know I do) so they have gone largely unaffected (unless you’re trying to sell a copy of the Lonely Planet in South East Asia).
The Productivity Commission has handed down its finding that parallel imports should be allowed (IP Wars comment’s here). I haven’t read a LOT about the issue but I have read a bit and I must confess, I’m waiting for someone to appeal to my protectionist side and give me the argument against.
You see, ‘Piracy’ exists when there is a market failure. Staged releases of films at the cinema, regional protections on DVDs all breed piracy. There is a market for everything to be available as soon as possible and when that market isn’t met, people turn to piracy to get the data/film they want. Any film that is released in Australia a few months after it has been released in the USA or Europe will be heavily pirated whilst films released world wide simultaneously will do better (depending on a myriad of other factors of course).
Based on this, I don’t see a problem with Parallel Imports.
So whose interests are at stake here and what is the effect or this decision (and please correct me in the comments, I’m not committed to this position, it’s just where my logic leaves me):
Consumers: Hopefully consumers will have cheaper books. That’s a good thing. I’m a consumer advocate. However, I think that those opposing Parallel Imports are right on this one, the price cut will not be passed on to consumers. It will just mean bigger profits for major bookstore chains. However, it might mean that we get some books hear earlier and that in itself is a good thing. It is also more likely that books will stay in print longer as they are serving a much bigger audience.
In addition, consumers can already parallel import and do so quite often. Let’s be a little realistic here and help make bookstores more competitive in our digital age.
Authors: I want Australian authors to be able to earn a decent wage from their writing. If they write a book that people want to read then I’d like to think that they could make a living off it. I’m yet to be convinced that the economic impact felt by authors will much at all. I understand that overseas publishers don’t pay as well as Australian ones but the scale that they can sell your book on is much bigger. I have concerns about the exclusive agreements that some publishers have with big chain stores in America which means that if you don’t have a certain publisher your books will only be found in independent book stores. But that has nothing to do with Parallel imports.
Moreover, we’re only talking about books that appeal to international Audiences though. Books that are particularly Australian will still probably only have the local release.
Publishers: Again, I want small independent Australian publishers to thrive in this global economy of ours. Will Parallel imports put them all out of business? Are they only surviving because they are protected against oveseas publishers? I hope not. If they are then they are a product of the market failure I mentioned above. Could this actually be an opportunity for them.
Australian content will still be published by Australian Publishers when there isn’t the overseas audience for them. So will niche books. In fact it is quite possible that this change will lead to a great deal of innovation in the Australian Publishing industry. It’s not hard to exist as a pretty small publishing company. Think of publishers like Pluto Press or Melbourne University Press. Both seem to get by just fine and publish a range of great books that would otherwise go unpublished.
So I can’t see this destroying the Australian Publishing industry tomorrow. In fact, I hope other countries don’t have laws preventing parallel imports and they can sell their books overseas.
Book Shops: Bookshops will do fine out of this deal. In fact one of the things that makes me a bit suspicious about the push for Parallel Imports is that books shops will do so well out of it. Chances are that most of the savings they make from Parallel imports will not be passed on to consumers and their profits will increase.
… that’s it. Please correct me in the comments, I want to be wrong on this one.
