Issues
A manifestation of the philosophical divide between those who support various intellectual property and those who are critical of it, is the divide over the legitimacy of parallel importation. Some believe that it benefits consumers by lowering prices and widening the selection and consumption of products available in the market, while others believe that it discourages intellectual property owners from investing in new and innovative products. Some also believe that parallel imports tend to facilitate copyright infringement.
This tension essentially concerns the rights and duties of a protected monopoly. Intellectual property rights allow the holder to sell at a price that is higher than the price one would pay in a competitive market, but by doing so the holder relinquishes sales to those who would be prepared to buy at a price between the monopoly price and the competitive price. The presence of parallel imports in the marketplace prevents the holder from exploiting the monopoly further by market segmentation, i.e. by applying different prices to different consumers.
Consumer organisations tend to support parallel importation as it offers consumers more choice and lower prices, provided that consumers retain equivalent legal protection to locally sourced products (e.g. in the form of warranties with international effect), and competition is not diminished.
However, such organisations also warn consumers of certain risks in using parallel-imported products. Although the products may have been made to comply with the laws and customs of their place of origin, these products or their use may not comply with those in places where they are used, or some of their functions may be rendered unusable or meaningless (which may needlessly drive up prices). Electronic devices, however, suffer less from this type of risk because newer models support more than one user language.
Read more about this topic: Parallel Import
Famous quotes containing the word issues:
“To make life more bearable and pleasant for everybody, choose the issues that are significant enough to fight over, and ignore or use distraction for those you can let slide that day. Picking your battles will eliminate a number of conflicts, and yet will still leave you feeling in control.”
—Lawrence Balter (20th century)
“The hard truth is that what may be acceptable in elite culture may not be acceptable in mass culture, that tastes which pose only innocent ethical issues as the property of a minority become corrupting when they become more established. Taste is context, and the context has changed.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“How to attain sufficient clarity of thought to meet the terrifying issues now facing us, before it is too late, is ... important. Of one thing I feel reasonably sure: we can’t stop to discuss whether the table has or hasn’t legs when the house is burning down over our heads. Nor do the classics per se seem to furnish the kind of education which fits people to cope with a fast-changing civilization.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)