Corporate negative externalities occur when corporations place some of the costs of their profit-seeking activity onto society. This paper suggests that the current global problem of intellectual property crime is such an externality, and that it has not been recognised as such because corporations present product counterfeiting and piracy as crimes which reduce their revenue, rather than as predictable side effects of corporate production and merchandising, including branding activity, which have considerable socially deleterious consequences.
Here Simon Mackenzie argues that corporate actors are responsible for the socially harmful effects of the global counterfeiting problem in a range of respects. The article on which this soundbite clip is based is 'Counterfeiting as corporate externality: intellectual property crime and global insecurity' which is available in the Crime, Law and Social Change Journal, initially as on-line only content and then it will be published in Vol.53, No.6. To access the article visit http://link.springer.com/journal/10611.
Recorded July 2010.
