Copyrights infringement control awareness and practices in advertising agencies in Pakistan

Abstract: This research is focused on study of copyrights infringement control awareness techniques used by advertising agencies in Lahore, Pakistan. This research is focused on the point that the content that falls under copyright at the advertising agencies should follow a classification system. To achieve this goal, it is important to know how much the employees in these advertising agencies know about copyrights infringements. The practices used to control such infringements are also studied in this research. These techniques used by advertising agencies in Lahore are benchmarked against the state of the art techniques and technologies used according to industry standards. This research has been done by following a mixed methods approach. This research is partially based on literature review, data from questionnaire and from semi structured interviews. Analysis of the research has been conducted with the help of simple statistical techniques like arithmetic mean and frequency of a chosen reply. Findings of this research show that there is one very important reason which validates the selection of Pakistani advertising agencies sample for this research. In the developing world there are some very common factors which motivate people towards copyrights infringement. One important factor is that many people in these countries are still not very well aware of these rights and how this infringement occurs. These people tend to carry out copyrights infringements without in some cases knowing that they are committing a crime. On the other hand, the owner of the work in many cases does not apply for any patent or copyright protection. In case of an advertising agency however this issue is serious. Advertising agencies receive a lot of information from their clients. These agencies have access to the information about clients. These agencies also have their internal information. There is some information or creative work which is co-owned by the client and the advertising agencies. Copyrights infringement in this case thus can prove to be a very complicated issue. The objectives of this research were achieved completely.