20500356-Entry 3

Last week, there was a special lecture of prof. Larry Linamen about global illicit trades. I was interested in his speech about illegal products such as imitations or illegal copies, because I’d had an opposite opinion to his.

I thought that people use those products because the genuine product is too expensive; companies seem to me that they take improper profit through the price. Microsoft’s Windows is good example for my opinion, which is too high price and many friends of mine normally use illegal copies of it. I thought that consumers’ use of illegal copies is reasonable because of unreasonable price.

I read these articles when I was seeking ones that could defend my thought. They said that Korean companies were suffering for illegal imitations made in china. The damage from that was no less than 17 billion dollars. That fact let me think again about illegal products. I’d been regarding the invisible value such as brand power as unrighteous profit.

The use of illegal products gives huge loss to companies, and they raise the price up to recover the loss. Therefore, consumers who lost purchase power can’t help using illegal use so the scale of illegal product industry grows up. That is a vicious circle. In addition to that, another cost appears to regulate production and sale of those products; that raises price up. In the end, both producers and consumers are damaged from illegal product, and it is loss of entire society.

Then what should we do to root illegal product out? Finally it would be responsibility of both producers and consumers. Producers have to sell their products on reasonable prices, and consumers ought to know that the damage of illegal product retrns to themselves.

There is a excellent example of removing illegal copies. Hangul&Computer is the most famous company of word-processor market in korea. In 1998, they got in financial difficulty because of illegal copies, and they were willing to sign MOU with Microsoft to withdraw at word-processor market in condition of financial support of Microsoft. People got to know the fact, and they started a movement to save Hangul&Computer. It is Hangul815 that came out in this situation. It was so cheep that consumers can buy genuine copies, and it was sold over 650 thousand copies in market that was ruined by illegal copies. Thanks to the product, the company could survive and continue to product better programs.

I’ve founded the importance of using genuine products through prof. Larry Linamen’s lecture and searching for the articles about it. In consumer’s perspective, using genuine copies gets company to make new and better goods, which is profitable both to the society and me. In perspective of future businessman, and also, I’ve founded that I should decide reasonable price so that consumers don’t attempt use illegal products.