Copyright, Protection or Limitation

Copyright, Protection or Limitation

According to the definition provided in wikipedia: “Copyright is a set of exclusive rights regulating the use of a particular expression of an idea or information. At its most general, it is literally "the right to copy" an original creation.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright)

There are different approaches to the issue of copyright law; some opponents seek to emphasize on the economic side and point out that the permission of copying, make the products more available and affordable, while some proponents strongly defend their stands to reserve the creators’ territory of belonging and their both material and moral rights.

The first group’s idea is not persuasive enough to permit the violation of the copyright law, whether internal or external. Pirating, in fact a kind of larceny, can not be justified by any means. And even, there are restricted rules for violators of this law in most of the countries. But in Iran it is a different case.

Although some of the famous and great companies in Iran managed to stabilize the copyright law for their products, but the violations can apparently be seen in a wide range and actually there is no firm attitude to this problem. This inconvenience appears mostly in the field of cinema, music and computer CDs rather than written products. (However plagiarism is nothing but an offensive violation of the moral rights of the copyright law, and can not be ignored.)

“Copyright can safeguard Iranian artists' rights”
(http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?ArchiveNews=Yes&NewsCode=49870&NewsKind=CurrentAffairs)
Amongst all the titles found for the copyright issue this eye-catching one immediately reminds the crowded streets and squares of Tehran which are filled with people who sell the pirated movies on screen, or yet not on screen even!

Since Iran is not a member of WTO (World Trade Organization), there is no official copyright relation. Hence whatever enacted law of copyright can not be generated to the other countries, and vise versa. As a result of a search in wikipedia, one of the “examples of some pirated items in Iran [is] the Microsoft Windows CD [with] a price tag of roughly $US 2.5 on it” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_copyright_issues) , while the same product with copyright, and no doubt with better quality, possibilities and worthy guarantee costs two dozen dollars more. There are also examples for Iranian’s pirated products, like the composed and sung music, which the composer or singer's neither moral nor material rights are reserved.

But as long as there are customers who buy the pirated products, especially those which are produced inside Iran, and there is no effective and decisive law against these obvious violations, there is no hope to improve the situation. The number of companies which are going broke will increase; since their source of income is supposed to be the amount of customer’s welcome and none of the paid money on their products have actually put in their pockets! So the quality of the products will decrease, while the price of them will increase to compensate for the deficit of direct customers; this is the effect of copyright law violations.
Do some probable temporary benefits, and one sided justifications, worth long-time destructive cultural and economical effects?