The politics of intellectual property are thus the politics of classification. Recordings and performances are divided into categories of the ownable and the non-ownable. But it's also a matter of classifying practices, which differs from country to county and culture to culture regardless of the kinds of technological distinctions which underlies definitions of intellectual property rights . In the case of cassette recording in India we can actually see how identical practices get reclassified as theft as a music industry appropriates a new technology. Peter Manuel's case study of the proliferation of cheap cassette technology in North India demonstrates how the fluidity of property concepts, and their disarticulation from the rights of cultural producers.
Simple duplication can become piracy because the definition of piracy is itself fluid.
Thus, the new economic policies also aided the spread of cassettes. Cassettes are incredibly cheap to produce and reproduce, easily distributed and transported, and the playback mechanism is similarly portable. Two cassette decks, and a supply of tape, spools and cases could put you in business as a duplication house. By the mid 1980s, cassette reproduced in this fashion accounted for the vast majority of the music sold in India. But this was not simply piracy, or illegal copying encroaching on legal industry.