Informal Economies in International Communications: Connecting Parallel Debates

Public policy is typically focused on reducing and containing informal trade, yet it is also instructive to examine why such activities exist and how they connect with the formal economy. This is of particular relevance to the current discussion about intellectual property rights. By outlining connections between the informal economies debate and the global piracy debate, this paper demonstrates how today's communications environment is characterized by different but intersecting modes of economic organization. The formalized consumption patterns underpinning international IP trade are not the natural state of affairs from which informal economies depart, but rather a historically specific market environment that has been politically produced and must be constantly maintained.