Loving that little ©

I have a bone to pick…Copyright laws…or lack thereof.

Here in Ecuador there is little to no enforcement on copyright infringement.

Therefore you can buy movies for a dollar, copy books completely on a copy machine, and have entirely illegal software on your computer.

This sounds great when you think about the money you save… however, It causes problems with the economy and more so with the creative potential of the country.

First, movies…I love that I can get the latest blockbuster hit for a dollar, sometimes before they are even out of the theater in the US. But this is also why artists and filmmakers could never make money with an Ecuadorian film unless it makes it to the international level. It is hard to get to the international level if you can’t affordably make small time films first.

And I have never seen a legal DVD store here in Ecuador. I have seen fancy ones that look legit (have a real cover and printing on the DVD) but cost $3.75, but it would be shocking to an Ecuadorian to pay $15.00 for a DVD.

In 1998, the government enacted an Intellectual Property Law. However, 9 years later it is enforced very little. I have heard of one raid on a DVD shop in Guayaquil, where they came in and removed every illegal DVD. The reality is that in every small town a person is selling DVDs, CDs, and software for $1.00 to a $2.00 per disc.

Next, books, and more specifically textbooks…

I can only imagine that the worst job in Ecuador would to be an aspiring writer. Even if you made a great story or textbook, you would get almost no profit.
Grade school and high school textbooks here are produced by the government. (I don’t know about college books, but from what I have seen of the English books, I would guess it is the same.) Therefore the only writers that make any money are paid by the government to do so. There is no competition and most every school uses the same books. I just explained to a teacher that you need competition for better books and the freedom of the teachers to select the books they like. This way the good authors keep making better books.

Quite often I am asked to help students with their English homework. And at times the teachers even come with questions. The frustrating thing is that the exercises in the book are confusing even to English speakers. I find myself asking the teachers “what does a student learn from this?”, or “if I don’t know how to complete the exercise, how will the students?”

The concern here is not so much creativity and for the livelihood writer, but concern for the students (and the future potential writers of these books) who are not getting the best education. However on the flip side…This means more books in people’s houses then they could afford, if the laws were stricter.

I use a “Ingles para Dummies” book to teach here (from the States, legal in all rights). I am very satisfied with it. When planning a lesson I open up a page, and decide…”OK today we are talking about food”, and I use it as a guide for my lesson. It explains English rules in Spanish. Never having taught my own language to anyone before Ecuador, I realized I don’t know the rules from that perspective. My first week in my site, a neighbor asked me “What is the difference between the verbs to watch, to look, and to see?”. Oh hell, I don’t know…let me Google it. My point is: I have yet to see an English textbook that comes close to the quality of my "for dummies" book.

Next the “Compu”…

I also had a friend get her computer fixed here. The computer company (as a gift) gives you lots of illegal software, in her case (from what I remember), Encarta, and Microsoft office. She didn’t ask, or was asked if this could be done. But she does appreciate the Encarta, because it is in Spanish and is a good language learning tool. However, she already had a legal version of Office on her computer; they removed it and put on an outdated illegal version in Spanish.

Software is the most reduced price of everything. Here you can get Rosetta Stone for $2.00. Yep that is 0.33% of what is costs in the states. Most peoples’ and businesses’ Operating systems are illegal as well. And so is their antivirus software. Which is funny… because I get the feeling that computers here are far more susceptible to viruses. I am guessing some of the automatic updates to legal versions of Windows protect your computer from new attacks and with an illegal version the automatic over-the-internet updates, do not come included.

While I admit, I rarely ever bought a DVD in the states for $15 dollars, I would just rent. And I would buy used books whenever possible, and use freeware instead of paying for software. At least our society doesn’t have the downfalls in creativity, and artists and writers can make a living. Can you imagine the money put into research and design in a software company to create a program or game? Then that game is copied at will and distributed to everyone for almost nothing. So many cutting edge ideas are ruined by lack of laws…Or an engineer spends years designing a machine to build widgets ten times faster than before. A company steals the design and produces them with no regard for the development work. Why design?