Piracy        Pirates roam the Internet, not just the high seas.

	What is Piracy? Although there is no single, agreed-upon definition of what constitutes "piracy", the use of another's intellectual or physical property without recompense is the basis for any working definition. Copyright laws attempt to codify and ban such practices, but not all countries have (or recognize) copyright laws. This resulting gray area is exploited by individuals and companies that reproduce another's work (often as their own) in order to profit by selling it in the marketplace.
	What Can I Do?    While it may be tempting to save money by purchasing material from a questionable or unresearched source, the only way the consumer can fight piracy is to refrain from purchasing from such companies: they damage the rights, profitability, and long-term viability of honest ship model designers and manufacturers worldwide.
	How to Recognize Piracy The concept of piracy and "knock-offs" conjures an impression of poor quality: plans, materials, and instructions of legitimate kits that are inaccurate and/or below standard. However, the quality of a pirated kit can now be quite high due to computer and laser-cutting technology. Thus, quality is no longer a defining feature of piracy. While many of the offending manufacturers do not have their own retail websites, their pirated model ship plans and kits appear for sale regularly on reputable websites such as Amazon, eBay, WayFair, and Etsy, among many others. An obscuring factor is that they may also offer legitimate material for sale alongside pirated items, thus making them harder to identify. What is clear, however, is that exact (or near-exact) duplications of copyright-protected plans and kits are for sale in the world marketplace. Fortunately, many of them have been identified as such by legitimate ship model designers and manufacturers. The Nautical Research Guild* has investigated and reported on piracy and its effect on the ship modeling industry and maintains a list of offending manufacturers on their Model Ship World† site.
	Notes * Nautical Research Guild, "Policy on Pirated Kits and Other Intellectual Property" † Model Ship World, "Guidelines"