Informal economies in international communications: connecting parallel debates

Public policy is typically focused on reducing and containing shadow trade, yet it is also useful to understand 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. Tracing some connections between the shadow economies debate and the 'global piracy' debate, I show how today's communications environment is characterised 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 shadow economies depart, but rather a historically specific market environment that has been politically produced and must be constantly maintained.