You have no rights unless granted by a treaty, and where there is one a breach is typically not going to be considered sufficient cause for war. In the 1800s, sure, but not so much today
Plus, what are you going to do after you invade?
I guess you arrest the people copying the drugs and then leave. It isn't perfect, and obviously you try economic sanctions first, but the fundamental problem is that we make treaties with countries and then they flaunt their violations and there is no world government that can intervene effectively.
You accept piracy as a cost of business in China or India (where they literally pirate cars) but Chad? Mali? These aren't countries that offer us any advantages which justify the theft, as far as I am aware.
To be clear, this is not "SKFM thinks we should go to war over corporate profits." I just think that there is a general problem with relationships between sovreigns in the modern world, and IP infringement is just one way those problems manifest. If there is no other effective solution, I just don't think that we should throw our hands up and say that the poor nations stealing from the citizens of rich countries is some sort of intractable problem with no solution.
What.
I don't believe in universal human rights. I believe the only rights we have are those we can enforce against the government, which are essentially pools of safety from the government's monopoly on the lawful use of force. So outsiders do not have any inherent rights w/r/t foreign governments, unless said government has consented to those rights by treaty AND the government actually abides by said treaty. Many players in the international community disapprove of certain of [SOVERIGN ENTITY]'s actions, but the international community never sanctions [SOVERIGN ENTITY], and so even if those actions violate what look like rights acquired by treaty, they aren't violating true rights at all because the individuals have no recourse for the violation (only other countries do). Contrast this with the right to free speech in the US, which is actually enforceable against the government by an individual through the courts.
So when the subject is intellectual property rights, its not about the money, its about "rights, treaties and laws". When the subject is human rights or the Geneva Convention, its not about "true rights", and treaties aren't real laws anyway.
I feel your stance on the validity of international treaties is somewhat contradictory.
I don't think there is a contradiction here at all. In the second quote, I was talking about what I see as the failure of the UN and other multinational bodies to approximate actual governments with actual laws. In this topic, I am talking about one expression of said failure. When you don't have an overarching body with an exclusive monopoly on the use of force (I.e., when talking about international relations instead of relationships between citizens of a single country) and one nation is breaching "international law", you can effectively only choose to assert force on your own (self help) or just give up. I do not see why we should choose the latter in this situation. Quite frankly, I find it perverse that we should have to so so at all in light of our vast financial and military superiority over most of these infringing countries. I called out China and India as the intractable cases because we cannot afford to do the same to them.
Edit: to be clear, in the second quote I focused on the lack of UN sanction of a sovreign as an indication that said sovreign could take what actions it likes, but that is of course limited to the point where your stronger neighbor demands that you stop, which is precisely what I am saying ought to happen here.
spacekungfuman on
0
Options
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
We don't have morasses of secret bilateral military and economic treaties any more. We have large multilateral international institutions. There is only one WTO, for instance. The very deliberate purpose of such institutions is to prevent SKFM's particular worries from escalating into another World War One, by making it easy to negotiate for a synchronized boycott of nations that violate economic treaties. Getting booted from the WTO means losing Most Favoured Nation status with all WTO members, for instance, not merely the country you provoked.
Obviously such measures are flexible in the face of superpower(s), but I hope it is obvious why calling for the re-introduction of gunboat diplomacy to the world system is horrific. We don't, in fact, want a world where countries feel obligated to project power on their own. Miscalculation and then deadly war is inevitable.
Ronya - what do you say to the point I have raised in past threads about the perverse result where the weaker country can breach rules with impunity while the stronger nation must look on helplessly? We have agreements with nations that are vastly weaker than us regarding respecting IP rights. They breach them all the time without a care. International bodies are unable or unwilling to help. Why must it be that the end result of this scenario is victory for the weaker nation? It seems absurd to me.
0
Options
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Military action to press the interests of a corporation is absurd
Is military action to press the rights of a country's citizens against rampant, unrepentant violation by anothe country (which is a party to but ignoring IP treaties) really so absurd? It doesn't strike me as so.
It doesn't strike you as absurd to spend lives and shitloads money chasing a comparatively insignificant number of dollars?
It isn't just about money. It's about rights, treaties and laws. If the use of force (thereby giving credibility to the threat of the use of force) is what it takes, then so be it. It's one of the many problems with national relations (there is no effective arbiter to resolve these types of problems).
WIPO
But here's the thing, treaties are not the divine right of man writ into law. If your interpretation/enforcement of a treaty is screwing a country over then they can go ahead and just end their agreement. Then they aren't actually violating your government backed claim to intellectual property since they do not recognize it in the first place. Seeing how intellectual property isn't actually property, and given the inherently interdependent nature of discovery I'm not really seeing how coercion, let alone force of arms, is justified.
I think you know how strongly I disagree with the first bolded claim, but the second seems irrelevant here. We are not talking about third world scientists using IP they don't have a right to to further their research. We are talking about simple replication without a license. It's akin to a factory in China churning out exact copies of a designer hand bag. In this case, just as in the hand bag case, the factory owner is in the wrong, and if the government will not shut down that factory when asked, that is where I think sanctions are appropriate.
0
Options
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Hahahahaha you're advocating wars to enforce American IP law?
Jesus Christ I hope you'll be first in line to die for the glory of Apple
This is what it comes down to. SKFM, if you're not willing to pick up a gun and march into Chad or wherever to enforce apples claim to the iphone, you have no right to expect other people to. Which I suspect you do.
I am not willing to pick up a gun and march anywhere. That does not disqualify me from believing in the legitimacy of projections of military force.
Hahahahaha you're advocating wars to enforce American IP law?
Jesus Christ I hope you'll be first in line to die for the glory of Apple
This is what it comes down to. SKFM, if you're not willing to pick up a gun and march into Chad or wherever to enforce apples claim to the iphone, you have no right to expect other people to. Which I suspect you do.
I am not willing to pick up a gun and march anywhere. That does not disqualify me from believing in the legitimacy of projections of military force.
Morally speaking, it kind of does. If you think a particular cause is worth someone elses life, but not yours, you're a hypocrite.
You have no rights unless granted by a treaty, and where there is one a breach is typically not going to be considered sufficient cause for war. In the 1800s, sure, but not so much today
Plus, what are you going to do after you invade?
I guess you arrest the people copying the drugs and then leave. It isn't perfect, and obviously you try economic sanctions first, but the fundamental problem is that we make treaties with countries and then they flaunt their violations and there is no world government that can intervene effectively.
You accept piracy as a cost of business in China or India (where they literally pirate cars) but Chad? Mali? These aren't countries that offer us any advantages which justify the theft, as far as I am aware.
To be clear, this is not "SKFM thinks we should go to war over corporate profits." I just think that there is a general problem with relationships between sovreigns in the modern world, and IP infringement is just one way those problems manifest. If there is no other effective solution, I just don't think that we should throw our hands up and say that the poor nations stealing from the citizens of rich countries is some sort of intractable problem with no solution.
What.
I don't believe in universal human rights. I believe the only rights we have are those we can enforce against the government, which are essentially pools of safety from the government's monopoly on the lawful use of force. So outsiders do not have any inherent rights w/r/t foreign governments, unless said government has consented to those rights by treaty AND the government actually abides by said treaty. Many players in the international community disapprove of certain of [SOVERIGN ENTITY]'s actions, but the international community never sanctions [SOVERIGN ENTITY], and so even if those actions violate what look like rights acquired by treaty, they aren't violating true rights at all because the individuals have no recourse for the violation (only other countries do). Contrast this with the right to free speech in the US, which is actually enforceable against the government by an individual through the courts.
So when the subject is intellectual property rights, its not about the money, its about "rights, treaties and laws". When the subject is human rights or the Geneva Convention, its not about "true rights", and treaties aren't real laws anyway.
I feel your stance on the validity of international treaties is somewhat contradictory.
I don't think there is a contradiction here at all. In the second quote, I was talking about what I see as the failure of the UN and other multinational bodies to approximate actual governments with actual laws. In this topic, I am talking about one expression of said failure. When you don't have an overarching body with an exclusive monopoly on the use of force (I.e., when talking about international relations instead of relationships between citizens of a single country) and one nation is breaching "international law", you can effectively only choose to assert force on your own (self help) or just give up. I do not see why we should choose the latter in this situation. Quite frankly, I find it perverse that we should have to so so at all in light of our vast financial and military superiority over most of these infringing countries. I called out China and India as the intractable cases because we cannot afford to do the same to them.
Because it is blatantly obvious that the cost of enforcement could in no possibly way offset the losses incurred by the breaches, thus actual realpolitik - rather than what you usually like to veil in the guise of realpolitik - very, very clearly dictates that enforcement would be less-than-ideal.
When this was pointed out to you by shryke, you responded with
It isn't just about money. It's about rights, treaties and laws.
All of these three things are things you have previously expressed a complete disdain for in favour of what you've called realpolitik. Except, suddenly, when the subject is intellectual property law rather than human rights or the Geneva Convention, they matter. Now its worth killing and dying over the principle of it.
I dunno, maybe I shouldn't call this a contradicting stance. Maybe there's a better term. Maybe there's even a better term that won't get me infracted.
We don't have morasses of secret bilateral military and economic treaties any more. We have large multilateral international institutions. There is only one WTO, for instance. The very deliberate purpose of such institutions is to prevent SKFM's particular worries from escalating into another World War One, by making it easy to negotiate for a synchronized boycott of nations that violate economic treaties. Getting booted from the WTO means losing Most Favoured Nation status with all WTO members, for instance, not merely the country you provoked.
Obviously such measures are flexible in the face of superpower(s), but I hope it is obvious why calling for the re-introduction of gunboat diplomacy to the world system is horrific. We don't, in fact, want a world where countries feel obligated to project power on their own. Miscalculation and then deadly war is inevitable.
Ronya - what do you say to the point I have raised in past threads about the perverse result where the weaker country can breach rules with impunity while the stronger nation must look on helplessly? We have agreements with nations that are vastly weaker than us regarding respecting IP rights. They breach them all the time without a care. International bodies are unable or unwilling to help. Why must it be that the end result of this scenario is victory for the weaker nation? It seems absurd to me.
During the 19th century individuals and companies in the US breached the IP rights of British and other European industrial patents, and of British literature copyrights despite frequent complaints. Though a land invasion would have been impossible, the differential in naval strength would have made blockaded the US coastline and shelling places like Manhattan into oblivion trivial. Should the Europeans have done so? If not why not? Is it only bad when its other people using stuff you've called dibs on?
If you told me that I could put in a lot of work and spend a lot of money for a shot at developing something, and if it works out, the largest countries in the world are going to just take my work without compensation, that would be pretty demoralizing to me, even if I knew I was also likely to make a fortune in America.
See, if I we're to become super rich off selling a drug in America I wouldn't really give two shits that it was also saving lives in other countries that couldn't have afforded to buy it anyway.
Scenario 1: I make a drug, it makes me jillions, poor countries don't make generic versions of it and millions of people suffer and/or die which gets me nothing.
Scenario 2: I make a drug, it makes me jillions, poor countries do make a Generic version and millions of people don't suffer and/or die which gets me nothing.
Neither scenario gets me anything extra. One of them reduces suffering in the world.
It's about rights in your property. Like I said before, just because your property is stolen for a noble purpose doesn't mean that its ok. Why did the baker deserve to lose his bread just because Jean Val Jean's family was starving? I think the better approach in these situations is selling on a discounted basis to the governments of these poor countries.
Yes I'm well aware you value calling dibs more than human life.
That's not what it is at all. I value rights in property, and if I have a property right, then it doesn't matter what your claim is to my property. It is my right to decide if it is meritorious enough to warrant giving you use of my property.
Except those rights aren't unlimited, and are protected by laws and the monopoly on orce government has to enforce those laws.
If there were to be some form of easement, to use real property terms on your intellectual property - such as fair use doctrine - that is fully within the purview of the government.
Property rights aren't a natural right - you don't have an unlimited right do do anything with your property of any sort. Property rights are given, not simply enumerated.
I agree in principle, and this is plainly borne out in the way that our property rights are implemented (the government may purchase easements or seize your land in certain, limited circumstances and of course, we accept taxation). However, I think that when you don't adequately protect property rights, you run a real risk that people stop accepting the legitimacy of the government monopoly on force. In this case, where we are talking about a poor country stealing your formula and manufacturing a generic drug without the owner's permission, it seems to invite a high degree of self help, which may well come in the form of a refusal to market in the infringing country. I can easily imagi e more drastic measures like only permitting partial manufacturing outside of secure facilities and requiring patients to come to those secure facilities to receive the completed drug, or even future technology that renders a drug inert (or even toxic) until a final, confidential step is taken to finish processing the drug, and all of these types of features (much like DRM) would ultimately harm legitimate users. Better in my mind to do everything we can to respect these rights, even if the result is more suffering for a certain population of illegitimate users, than to promote this type of self help, which I think can become very dangerous very quickly.
@spacekungfuman Ok, didn't get back to this until this morning...but while I definitely agree that there are major downsides to failure to adequately protect property rights. I'm probably - in actuality - closer to your opinion on property rights than some of the 'post-intellectual property society' people. I think there should be protections on IP, but those rights should be limited based on the type of property. Individuals and companies should have an opportunity to recoup their investments and even profit on them because that spurs future development and progress which betters humanity. That is the stated purpose - at least in US law - for all the patent, copyright, IP, etc laws.
In practice, if the enforcement of a law is contrary to the stated purpose of the law or on it's face is unjust, the law should be set aside. I'm not a lawyer like you, but I've been reading through a lot of briefs and opinions lately that make it pretty clear that's a fundamental philosophy in law.
When it comes to most discoveries in medicine, there is nothing being 'created' - genes, chemistry, molecular compounds, etc are already natural things that are already there. Now, I'll grant you that in the future, when gene sequences that are tailored from scratch (vs. hacked together natural combinations) become a common thing, there may be some more leeway on the rights to the 'created from scratch' so to speak genes - but even then they are likely to be based off / incorporate 'common use' sequences that have arisen naturally.
The studies and data associated with those studies may be intellectual property, but the chemical compounds themselves (outside of complexity) are really no different than recipes, and should be treated as such. Pfizer has a claim if proprietary data / processes / documentation they collected is being used in Bumfuckistan, and certainly have the right to remove themselves from that market if they wish, but in my eyes they have no claim to the ownership of that particular chemical compound or the methods of administration.
In most cases, by neglecting to enter those markets (or choosing to price their product outside the range of those markets) the drug companies have ceded the market to competition who is willing to offer the products at a reasonable price.
The drug companies, as companies, are in business to make as much money as they can within the law. Protections on IP exist to encourage future development and progress for the benefit of humanity. In many cases those two goals align, but when they are in direct conflict I will generally side with the 'progress and benefit of humanity'.
It's the same thing for other property rights. That's why we have things like eminent domain, taxation, etc. Having property rights is a net benefit to humanity, but when property rights become a detriment to society / humanity, the property rights necessarily crumble. This is borne over again in again - everything from FCC regulations on the wireless spectrum to easements for power / phone to eminent domain being used to build roads backs up this concept. There is a strong compelling interest in respecting property rights, and you do raise a good point of negative side effects of too completely undermining property rights (i.e. the dangers of nationalizing all industry or property like the USSR) but in balance, we are far, far from the point that the negatives offset the positives.
As for the place the discussion went - with military action to protect IP...I think that's an extreme hypothetical and unlikely to ever happen. However, I can see military force as being something along the spectrum of acceptable actions - everything from diplomatic protest to sanctions / boycotts to industrial espionage / sabotage to all the way at the end military action. It's hard to think of a hypothetical where it would be legitimate to simply address IP (maybe...I dunno...North Korea's $100 bill factory?) or the benefits would ever come close to outweighing the risks / costs, but if the IP theft was so grievous and damaging to a society and nation, and the nation / companies engaging in the IP theft were so unreasonable and flaunting the law, I could maybe see it as a justifiable position. It would have to be unreasonable and damaging past any real world scenario I could ever envision though, and all other options would need to be exhausted first.
0
Options
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I made a new thread to discuss this specific issue, so that this thread can return to its normal discussion of monsanto and other IP related issues:
We don't have morasses of secret bilateral military and economic treaties any more. We have large multilateral international institutions. There is only one WTO, for instance. The very deliberate purpose of such institutions is to prevent SKFM's particular worries from escalating into another World War One, by making it easy to negotiate for a synchronized boycott of nations that violate economic treaties. Getting booted from the WTO means losing Most Favoured Nation status with all WTO members, for instance, not merely the country you provoked.
Obviously such measures are flexible in the face of superpower(s), but I hope it is obvious why calling for the re-introduction of gunboat diplomacy to the world system is horrific. We don't, in fact, want a world where countries feel obligated to project power on their own. Miscalculation and then deadly war is inevitable.
Ronya - what do you say to the point I have raised in past threads about the perverse result where the weaker country can breach rules with impunity while the stronger nation must look on helplessly? We have agreements with nations that are vastly weaker than us regarding respecting IP rights. They breach them all the time without a care. International bodies are unable or unwilling to help. Why must it be that the end result of this scenario is victory for the weaker nation? It seems absurd to me.
During the 19th century individuals and companies in the US breached the IP rights of British and other European industrial patents, and of British literature copyrights despite frequent complaints. Though a land invasion would have been impossible, the differential in naval strength would have made blockaded the US coastline and shelling places like Manhattan into oblivion trivial. Should the Europeans have done so? If not why not? Is it only bad when its other people using stuff you've called dibs on?
I don't understand what part of that situation is perverse or absurd at all.
Military action to press the interests of a corporation is absurd
Is military action to press the rights of a country's citizens against rampant, unrepentant violation by anothe country (which is a party to but ignoring IP treaties) really so absurd? It doesn't strike me as so.
It doesn't strike you as absurd to spend lives and shitloads money chasing a comparatively insignificant number of dollars?
It isn't just about money. It's about rights, treaties and laws. If the use of force (thereby giving credibility to the threat of the use of force) is what it takes, then so be it. It's one of the many problems with national relations (there is no effective arbiter to resolve these types of problems).
WIPO
But here's the thing, treaties are not the divine right of man writ into law. If your interpretation/enforcement of a treaty is screwing a country over then they can go ahead and just end their agreement. Then they aren't actually violating your government backed claim to intellectual property since they do not recognize it in the first place. Seeing how intellectual property isn't actually property, and given the inherently interdependent nature of discovery I'm not really seeing how coercion, let alone force of arms, is justified.
You realise you just advocated the abolishment of contract law, don't you?
Nope, I didn't. Unless you are also advocating the abolition of bankruptcy or arbitration?
Intellectual Property law and treaties exist in order to confer a uniform government grant of protection over the people who created intellectual property. This is a significant distinction to be made. Because it points out that intellectual property 'rights' are a grant of government rather than a governmental acknowledgement of natural rights/order. It is an aberration from the natural order of ideas justified on the basis of promoting further advancements and creations of intellectual pursuits. That isn't inherently a bad thing (though it can certainly be applied poorly, obviously) but it is of singular importance when discussing governments obligations to IP claimants. The relationship works the other way 'round from what SKFM suggests.
I'm not being a hawk here. I think sanctions are probably enough. If economic sanctions did not work (either because the country doesn't care or they can't effectively police their own country) then I suspect that we could convince them to let us run some sort of action inside the country like we do now with drones. An all out war is hard to fathom, but the main reason for that to be honest is that it is now unacceptable to actually conquer somewhere, so you will always end up with an Afghanistan/Iraq debacle.
The Middle East hates us so much on account of drone strikes in Pakistan and the collateral damage they cause.
I made a game! Hotline Maui. Requires mouse and keyboard.
Posts
I don't think there is a contradiction here at all. In the second quote, I was talking about what I see as the failure of the UN and other multinational bodies to approximate actual governments with actual laws. In this topic, I am talking about one expression of said failure. When you don't have an overarching body with an exclusive monopoly on the use of force (I.e., when talking about international relations instead of relationships between citizens of a single country) and one nation is breaching "international law", you can effectively only choose to assert force on your own (self help) or just give up. I do not see why we should choose the latter in this situation. Quite frankly, I find it perverse that we should have to so so at all in light of our vast financial and military superiority over most of these infringing countries. I called out China and India as the intractable cases because we cannot afford to do the same to them.
Edit: to be clear, in the second quote I focused on the lack of UN sanction of a sovreign as an indication that said sovreign could take what actions it likes, but that is of course limited to the point where your stronger neighbor demands that you stop, which is precisely what I am saying ought to happen here.
Ronya - what do you say to the point I have raised in past threads about the perverse result where the weaker country can breach rules with impunity while the stronger nation must look on helplessly? We have agreements with nations that are vastly weaker than us regarding respecting IP rights. They breach them all the time without a care. International bodies are unable or unwilling to help. Why must it be that the end result of this scenario is victory for the weaker nation? It seems absurd to me.
I think you know how strongly I disagree with the first bolded claim, but the second seems irrelevant here. We are not talking about third world scientists using IP they don't have a right to to further their research. We are talking about simple replication without a license. It's akin to a factory in China churning out exact copies of a designer hand bag. In this case, just as in the hand bag case, the factory owner is in the wrong, and if the government will not shut down that factory when asked, that is where I think sanctions are appropriate.
I am not willing to pick up a gun and march anywhere. That does not disqualify me from believing in the legitimacy of projections of military force.
Morally speaking, it kind of does. If you think a particular cause is worth someone elses life, but not yours, you're a hypocrite.
When this was pointed out to you by shryke, you responded with All of these three things are things you have previously expressed a complete disdain for in favour of what you've called realpolitik. Except, suddenly, when the subject is intellectual property law rather than human rights or the Geneva Convention, they matter. Now its worth killing and dying over the principle of it.
I dunno, maybe I shouldn't call this a contradicting stance. Maybe there's a better term. Maybe there's even a better term that won't get me infracted.
During the 19th century individuals and companies in the US breached the IP rights of British and other European industrial patents, and of British literature copyrights despite frequent complaints. Though a land invasion would have been impossible, the differential in naval strength would have made blockaded the US coastline and shelling places like Manhattan into oblivion trivial. Should the Europeans have done so? If not why not? Is it only bad when its other people using stuff you've called dibs on?
@spacekungfuman Ok, didn't get back to this until this morning...but while I definitely agree that there are major downsides to failure to adequately protect property rights. I'm probably - in actuality - closer to your opinion on property rights than some of the 'post-intellectual property society' people. I think there should be protections on IP, but those rights should be limited based on the type of property. Individuals and companies should have an opportunity to recoup their investments and even profit on them because that spurs future development and progress which betters humanity. That is the stated purpose - at least in US law - for all the patent, copyright, IP, etc laws.
In practice, if the enforcement of a law is contrary to the stated purpose of the law or on it's face is unjust, the law should be set aside. I'm not a lawyer like you, but I've been reading through a lot of briefs and opinions lately that make it pretty clear that's a fundamental philosophy in law.
When it comes to most discoveries in medicine, there is nothing being 'created' - genes, chemistry, molecular compounds, etc are already natural things that are already there. Now, I'll grant you that in the future, when gene sequences that are tailored from scratch (vs. hacked together natural combinations) become a common thing, there may be some more leeway on the rights to the 'created from scratch' so to speak genes - but even then they are likely to be based off / incorporate 'common use' sequences that have arisen naturally.
The studies and data associated with those studies may be intellectual property, but the chemical compounds themselves (outside of complexity) are really no different than recipes, and should be treated as such. Pfizer has a claim if proprietary data / processes / documentation they collected is being used in Bumfuckistan, and certainly have the right to remove themselves from that market if they wish, but in my eyes they have no claim to the ownership of that particular chemical compound or the methods of administration.
In most cases, by neglecting to enter those markets (or choosing to price their product outside the range of those markets) the drug companies have ceded the market to competition who is willing to offer the products at a reasonable price.
The drug companies, as companies, are in business to make as much money as they can within the law. Protections on IP exist to encourage future development and progress for the benefit of humanity. In many cases those two goals align, but when they are in direct conflict I will generally side with the 'progress and benefit of humanity'.
It's the same thing for other property rights. That's why we have things like eminent domain, taxation, etc. Having property rights is a net benefit to humanity, but when property rights become a detriment to society / humanity, the property rights necessarily crumble. This is borne over again in again - everything from FCC regulations on the wireless spectrum to easements for power / phone to eminent domain being used to build roads backs up this concept. There is a strong compelling interest in respecting property rights, and you do raise a good point of negative side effects of too completely undermining property rights (i.e. the dangers of nationalizing all industry or property like the USSR) but in balance, we are far, far from the point that the negatives offset the positives.
As for the place the discussion went - with military action to protect IP...I think that's an extreme hypothetical and unlikely to ever happen. However, I can see military force as being something along the spectrum of acceptable actions - everything from diplomatic protest to sanctions / boycotts to industrial espionage / sabotage to all the way at the end military action. It's hard to think of a hypothetical where it would be legitimate to simply address IP (maybe...I dunno...North Korea's $100 bill factory?) or the benefits would ever come close to outweighing the risks / costs, but if the IP theft was so grievous and damaging to a society and nation, and the nation / companies engaging in the IP theft were so unreasonable and flaunting the law, I could maybe see it as a justifiable position. It would have to be unreasonable and damaging past any real world scenario I could ever envision though, and all other options would need to be exhausted first.
http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/178724/where-the-intangible-meets-the-insubstantial-ip-international-law-and-enforcement
I don't understand what part of that situation is perverse or absurd at all.
Nope, I didn't. Unless you are also advocating the abolition of bankruptcy or arbitration?
Intellectual Property law and treaties exist in order to confer a uniform government grant of protection over the people who created intellectual property. This is a significant distinction to be made. Because it points out that intellectual property 'rights' are a grant of government rather than a governmental acknowledgement of natural rights/order. It is an aberration from the natural order of ideas justified on the basis of promoting further advancements and creations of intellectual pursuits. That isn't inherently a bad thing (though it can certainly be applied poorly, obviously) but it is of singular importance when discussing governments obligations to IP claimants. The relationship works the other way 'round from what SKFM suggests.
The Middle East hates us so much on account of drone strikes in Pakistan and the collateral damage they cause.