Associate professor Jessica Gisclair delivered her Faculty Research and Development sabbatical research presentation Aug. 27 on intellectual property piracy and copyright both domestically and in China.
The Chinese are No. 1 in the world in illegal downloads, and until very recently, they haven’t acknowledged an ethical dilemma because they adhere to a Confucian philosophy, which essentially stipulates that whatever people create, they should be willing to share. In fact, it’s considered shameful to charge for it.
But because China owns the second largest economy worldwide, boasts a quarter of the world’s population and contains 210 million Internet users, theft of intellectual property has been an overwhelming concern.
Gisclair said there has been more efficiency in enforcing copyright laws in China, as the country’s rule of law undergoes significant changes in the realm intellectual property rights.
Her research led her in a couple of other directions, as well:
- Gisclair dove into the area of open-source versus proprietary-source software. Open-source software and code is available to all users at no charge, while proprietary-source code is guarded and comes at a cost. Gisclair suggested that developing countries use open-source options because it’s more adaptable and because there aren’t any copyright concerns.
- She is planning a panel discussion that discusses copyright, fair use and infringement.
- She is also going to study digital piracy by American college students, as well. In the course of her research, she discovered that employers were not hiring graduates who had been convicted of piracy because it demonstrated that the graduates had already engaged in unethical behavior.