a VUCA analysis: intellectual rights in the new age of internet
(this is a task for uni orientation)
violation of intellectual rights -- from the most “casual” bad deed like streaming movies illegally to the actual serious issues like plagiarism of scientific works -- is not a new problem. yet it has been getting worse, and the worst thing about it is that the worse it gets, the less people see it as a problem.
why i identify this issue as needing a VUCA analysis is simply because it fulfils the aspects. first of all, violation of intellectual rights in this new age has a very great deal of ambiguity. most of us must have heard about the fights between small artists and big companies, business owned by minorities and giant corporates, about which design is owned by which. or the internet going crazy every now and then about this artist copying the music of that other artist. or cases as simple as a teacher accusing her student of plagiarizing content for a given homework. with the development of technology, it is so easy to take inspiration from whatever piece of info we find on the internet, and most of the time, there’s only a very fine line between stealing a design and finding inspiration in it. the rules aren’t really clear, especially for the commons that we are.
the issue is also volatile because it is hard to control the violations of intellectual rights when basically everything is flowing freely on the net. you can take down hundreds of illegal streaming sites and the same amount will pop up again in matter of days (if you’re indonesian, you maybe remember the case with indoxxi). millions of illegal book copies are circulating, either via torrent or those places like libgen or even being casually sold on e-commerce sites. and for plagiarism, the wide variety of sites to copy from is definitely a big temptation for students when they are racing with deadlines. and so, the issue is also complex. it’s not just about shutting down sites or banning plagiarism, it’s also about educating the masses about which actions are considered as violations of intellectual rights. the reality is that a lot of the violators never even realize that they’re breaking any rules whatsoever. illegal movie streaming, app cracks, leaked music tracks, book copies sold as pdfs with none of the price ending up in the writer’s bank account. they are so all over the internet, so massive, that they have become normalized. and the community is so unaware, so clueless that what they have been doing is clearly illegal. one of the reason why this attitude is so normalized, especially in our nation, whether we like it or not is admittedly the fact that the lower-class society can’t afford the entertainment they used to get for free -- though illegally. it does not justify the action, but it plays part as one of a factor.
with all the reasoning above, we can also see that it is very uncertain when, or even whether at all this issue would come to a solution. greed is human nature, and there will always be people who seek advantage from others’ misfortune. as long as we try to solve this issue with traditional ways, there will be no putting end to it.
therefore, as one of a VUCA issues, the violation of intellectual rights in this new, modernized age of internet requires a re-thought-about solution. it requires strategy and definitely, cooperation from all parties. educating the masses and therefore ensuring that demand is low, then we can step ahead to erasing the supply altogether.
however, like all big issues, we can start small, and we can start from our own tiny selves. be aware of intellectual rights, and take part in protecting them -- which can be as simple as including citations in your research project.
