What if the IP holder is participating, but the market has been inundated with knock offs for years and so even the discounted price is "too high" by local standards because they are used to bear free? Is that not a harm?
No. Enterprises are in no way entitled to profits. Roll with the reality of the market or get out, that's the way capitalism works isn't it?
From what I've seen in the topics discussed within this thread I'd go more with clinically insane, but everyone's empowered to claim their own opinions I guess.
There is a difference between being guaranteed a profit and not having to compete with illicit copies of your product undercutting you.
What if the IP holder is participating, but the market has been inundated with knock offs for years and so even the discounted price is "too high" by local standards because they are used to bear free? Is that not a harm?
No. Enterprises are in no way entitled to profits. Roll with the reality of the market or get out, that's the way capitalism works isn't it?
From what I've seen in the topics discussed within this thread I'd go more with clinically insane, but everyone's empowered to claim their own opinions I guess.
There is a difference between being guaranteed a profit and not having to compete with illicit copies of your product undercutting you.
Let's be clear here - someone CAN be legitimately shot for stealing a purse.
Someone steals your purse, you call the police.
The police come, they barricade themselves behind a door.
The police break down the door, they resist arrest.
The police attempt to use non-lethal force to subdue the offender, they start using weapons to hold off police.
The police escalate the use of force, so does the offender.
The police shoot the offender when the use of force becomes too high.
Usually this doesn't happen, usually the offender goes "Screw this, I'm not getting shot for stealing a purse". But law enforcement typically doesn't go "Sorry, they locked the door. You're on your own" or "Sorry, they don't want to be arrested". Each level is backed up by the threat of escalation to the next level, the ultimate level of which is "You may die". Otherwise you could get away with any crime by possession of a gun and the word "No".
However, shooting is not the first response - typically that starts at "You are under arrest" and works its way up. But there always has to be an "up". When it comes down to it, all laws and all rights are backed up by "Do what I say or you will be killed", some of them just start with a politely worded letter.
In your example the person wasn't shot for stealing a purse, they were shot for threatening police officers with a weapon.
Technically true, in the same way that it's not the fall that kills you it's the sudden stop in the end. Escalation of resistance isn't so foregone as that, but there's still a chain of escalation - once law enforcement gets involved, it's often difficult to turn back.
If you don't pay your fines, you get penalties.
If you don't pay your penalties, you get a summons.
If you don't attend your summons, you get an injunction.
If you don't comply with your injunction, you get an arrest warrant issued.
If you don't comply with your arrest, the police will attempt to subdue you.
If you resist subdual, the police will typically escalate force...
It's not at all uncommon for the penalties to grow to be disproportionate with the offense if the offender continues to ignore attempts to enforce compliance. The logical (but not inevitable) conclusion of that is "Follow the law or die". With respect to countries and international law, if you can't escalate the chain you end up with Best Korea - an ostracized country with few friends, who routinely rocks the boat and threatens to test nuclear weapon until it gets more aid. No-one else wants to be best Korea, but at this point with all the sanctions etc. in place there's almost nothing more anyone else can do to enforce compliance except invade - and that's not going to happen any time soon.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
I thing there is a lot of hyperbole and perhaps some misunderstandings in this thread. I would like to try and clear some of this up and hopefully refocus this discussion.
No one in this thread is advocating a full on military action to defend IP rights. The most that is being advocated is blockades or police efforts. The more likely sanctions would be economic in nature. I would be interested to hear how people feel about economic sanctions, taking the military off the table.
No one in this thread is begrudging poor countries their rightfully held property. The only thing that I believe that anyone is upset over is the unlawful use of IP by nations (or people in those nations) who have not paid for the right to that IP. If anyone in this thread has an argument for why poor countries (or even China) should be allowed to use IP they have not produced or paid for (strictly for copying purposes, not research) other than "IP isn't property" I would be interested to discuss that as well.
I thing there is a lot of hyperbole and perhaps some misunderstandings in this thread. I would like to try and clear some of this up and hopefully refocus this discussion.
No one in this thread is advocating a full on military action to defend IP rights. The most that is being advocated is blockades or police efforts. The more likely sanctions would be economic in nature. I would be interested to hear how people feel about economic sanctions, taking the military off the table.
No one in this thread is begrudging poor countries their rightfully held property. The only thing that I believe that anyone is upset over is the unlawful use of IP by nations (or people in those nations) who have not paid for the right to that IP. If anyone in this thread has an argument for why poor countries (or even China) should be allowed to use IP they have not produced or paid for (strictly for copying purposes, not research) other than "IP isn't property" I would be interested to discuss that as well.
Why is anyone upset over the unlawful use of IP by nations that have paid for that IP?
Why is it that any given country should care about what is considered IP by companies in another country?
Why is it that any country should care about companies existing primarily within their borders having their IP infringed?
All of these questions are somehow not yet addressed. It is as though you believe IP infringement is some form of base-level moral indignity at which any just person will recoil.
Edit: I mean let's say I create a cartoon character in this thread, call it little Durandal-y and sell statues of it on etsy for $1, and there are knockoffs in Australian markets tomorrow selling for 10 cents to those degraded Aussies.
At what point does anyone beyond myself give a flying fuck, and why?
What if the IP holder is participating, but the market has been inundated with knock offs for years and so even the discounted price is "too high" by local standards because they are used to bear free? Is that not a harm?
No. Enterprises are in no way entitled to profits. Roll with the reality of the market or get out, that's the way capitalism works isn't it?
From what I've seen in the topics discussed within this thread I'd go more with clinically insane, but everyone's empowered to claim their own opinions I guess.
There is a difference between being guaranteed a profit and not having to compete with illicit copies of your product undercutting you.
You can't guarantee profits.
And it's a lot harder to make a profit when the other guy is undercutting you with your own product.
I thing there is a lot of hyperbole and perhaps some misunderstandings in this thread. I would like to try and clear some of this up and hopefully refocus this discussion.
No one in this thread is advocating a full on military action to defend IP rights. The most that is being advocated is blockades or police efforts. The more likely sanctions would be economic in nature. I would be interested to hear how people feel about economic sanctions, taking the military off the table.
No one in this thread is begrudging poor countries their rightfully held property. The only thing that I believe that anyone is upset over is the unlawful use of IP by nations (or people in those nations) who have not paid for the right to that IP. If anyone in this thread has an argument for why poor countries (or even China) should be allowed to use IP they have not produced or paid for (strictly for copying purposes, not research) other than "IP isn't property" I would be interested to discuss that as well.
Why is anyone upset over the unlawful use of IP by nations that have paid for that IP?
Why is it that any given country should care about what is considered IP by companies in another country?
Why is it that any country should care about companies existing primarily within their borders having their IP infringed?
All of these questions are somehow not yet addressed. It is as though you believe IP infringement is some form of base-level moral indignity at which any just person will recoil.
Edit: I mean let's say I create a cartoon character in this thread, call it little Durandal-y and sell statues of it on etsy for $1, and there are knockoffs in Australian markets tomorrow selling for 10 cents to those degraded Aussies.
At what point does anyone beyond myself give a flying fuck, and why?
I give a flying fuck, and it's because the same laws that protect you, protect me. As I pointed out in chat earlier, part of the reason people don't care about copyright is because they don't see how it protects them. When they do see how it protects them (for example, when Instagram tried to change their ToS to allow them use of their members' pictures), they tend to be supportive of it.
I thing there is a lot of hyperbole and perhaps some misunderstandings in this thread. I would like to try and clear some of this up and hopefully refocus this discussion.
No one in this thread is advocating a full on military action to defend IP rights. The most that is being advocated is blockades or police efforts. The more likely sanctions would be economic in nature. I would be interested to hear how people feel about economic sanctions, taking the military off the table.
No one in this thread is begrudging poor countries their rightfully held property. The only thing that I believe that anyone is upset over is the unlawful use of IP by nations (or people in those nations) who have not paid for the right to that IP. If anyone in this thread has an argument for why poor countries (or even China) should be allowed to use IP they have not produced or paid for (strictly for copying purposes, not research) other than "IP isn't property" I would be interested to discuss that as well.
Why is anyone upset over the unlawful use of IP by nations that have paid for that IP?
Why is it that any given country should care about what is considered IP by companies in another country?
Why is it that any country should care about companies existing primarily within their borders having their IP infringed?
All of these questions are somehow not yet addressed. It is as though you believe IP infringement is some form of base-level moral indignity at which any just person will recoil.
Edit: I mean let's say I create a cartoon character in this thread, call it little Durandal-y and sell statues of it on etsy for $1, and there are knockoffs in Australian markets tomorrow selling for 10 cents to those degraded Aussies.
At what point does anyone beyond myself give a flying fuck, and why?
If I am the US government, I would care a lot. The US produces and exports IP. It's a huge segment of the economy. Infringement lowers my tax base, causes people to lose jobs in America, and erodes America's position as a world leader in thought.
I thing there is a lot of hyperbole and perhaps some misunderstandings in this thread. I would like to try and clear some of this up and hopefully refocus this discussion.
No one in this thread is advocating a full on military action to defend IP rights. The most that is being advocated is blockades or police efforts. The more likely sanctions would be economic in nature. I would be interested to hear how people feel about economic sanctions, taking the military off the table.
No one in this thread is begrudging poor countries their rightfully held property. The only thing that I believe that anyone is upset over is the unlawful use of IP by nations (or people in those nations) who have not paid for the right to that IP. If anyone in this thread has an argument for why poor countries (or even China) should be allowed to use IP they have not produced or paid for (strictly for copying purposes, not research) other than "IP isn't property" I would be interested to discuss that as well.
Why is anyone upset over the unlawful use of IP by nations that have paid for that IP?
Why is it that any given country should care about what is considered IP by companies in another country?
Why is it that any country should care about companies existing primarily within their borders having their IP infringed?
All of these questions are somehow not yet addressed. It is as though you believe IP infringement is some form of base-level moral indignity at which any just person will recoil.
Edit: I mean let's say I create a cartoon character in this thread, call it little Durandal-y and sell statues of it on etsy for $1, and there are knockoffs in Australian markets tomorrow selling for 10 cents to those degraded Aussies.
At what point does anyone beyond myself give a flying fuck, and why?
If I am the US government, I would care a lot. The US produces and exports IP. It's a huge segment of the economy. Infringement lowers my tax base, causes people to lose jobs in America, and erodes America's position as a world leader in thought.
The business sector is doing a really lousy job trying to keep employment a high priority in America. This is part of the problem the nation is losing its strength as a world leader. America no longer gives a fuck about being the best in the world it wants to outsource to third world countries to preserve the profits for the wealthy class and let the middle class die.
This is an imaginary problem, and the prescription to the real bits is to create/wait for a vast population of middle class consumers in third world countries (that's when they stop being that). Enforcing IP law of luxury/expensive media on third world countries is a lot like selling expensive media in third world countries. Until a country is developed, most IP enforcement proposals are somewhere between ineffectual and massive waste of resources.
Pass.
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Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
SmasherStarting to get dizzyRegistered Userregular
edited May 2013
One of the results of the laws of physics in our universe is that, generally and simplistically speaking, two people can't make full use of one physical object. Two people can't eat the same apple unless they split it in half (in which case neither of them eats as much as if they'd had the whole apple), two people can't use the same car at the same time to go different places, and in general a transfer of an item from one person to another results in the first person losing the use of that item.
To prevent people from stealing from each other all the time we've come up with the concept of property, where any given object has an owner who has full legal control over that object granted to them by the government. When combined with capitalism (which allows for the transfer of an item's control for money) and government enforcement of property rights this system works reasonably well (though certainly not perfectly) for providing a fair distribution of items.
Content however is not subject to the same physical limitations that material objects are. If I communicate content to someone else I don't lose the knowledge of that content or have a reduced ability to use it. Thus the rationale for the notion of property rights, which works for material objects, doesn't apply to content. That doesn't necessarily mean that there's no reasoning allowing the restriction of the distribution of content, and indeed there is, but it's not property rights.
Creating good content (whether inventions, books, songs, movies, etc.) is generally beneficial to society for obvious reasons and thus is an activity that should be encouraged. However, it takes time and effort to create these things, which is time and effort that's not spent doing other things to support the creator.
If there were no protection for content those creators wouldn't be able to make money off it, as the content could be distributed for free and most people would opt not to pay the creator (or not even know who they were). To allow people to make content professionally society gives them the exclusive right to distribute that content for some period of time. This allows people with the talent to come up with that content to do so full-time, thus being able to come up with more of it than they could if they could only focus on it part-time, which in turn benefits society more.
The common term for that is "Intellectual Property", but I think that's a highly misleading term and doesn't reflect the true reasoning behind the concept. In my opinion a better term would be "Exclusive Distribution Rights" (EDR).
So how does all that apply to the main line of argument in this thread?
Common sense dictates that even though nations have no jurisdiction over each other a natural extension of property rights applies to them as well, with each nation owning everything that lies within its borders. If one nation tries to take material objects from another nation without permission the first nation has a range of options extending from doing nothing to declaring war.
However, if we stop using the loaded phrase IP and instead use EDR it becomes clear that the first nation has no rights to control distribution of content in other nations to begin with. The first nation isn't losing content when it moves to the second nation, so property rights don't apply, and EDR is not a natural right but instead a created one adopted or not by each nation at its own discretion. A content creator can seek EDR in other countries individually, or two countries can recognize each other's EDR by treaty, but a nation has no obligation to establish its own EDR or recognize the EDR granted by other nations without such a treaty.
How would that apply to services then? Pretty much the only difference between IP "products" and Service "products" is the timing of the work expended by the provider - in both cases the customer is paying for time and expertise, and the provider is not physically being deprived of anything.
Can US companies en masse turn around to India and say, "You know what, the last 6 month of invoices you sent for Call Centre services? We're not going to pay those - we're now transferring all our contracts to County X. And good luck trying to get your government to enforce payment"?
Does it also follow that the first nation (India) has no rights to control usage of services in other nations to begin with?
Well, the biggest problem there is the government has the option for force companies to comply. But sure, it's quite possible for that to happen. And nobody can really force payment except the governments involved, but if a company did that I'd imagine they'd have some serious problems dealing with other companies in the future
One of the results of the laws of physics in our universe is that, generally and simplistically speaking, two people can't make full use of one physical object. Two people can't eat the same apple unless they split it in half (in which case neither of them eats as much as if they'd had the whole apple), two people can't use the same car at the same time to go different places, and in general a transfer of an item from one person to another results in the first person losing the use of that item.
To prevent people from stealing from each other all the time we've come up with the concept of property, where any given object has an owner who has full legal control over that object granted to them by the government. When combined with capitalism (which allows for the transfer of an item's control for money) and government enforcement of property rights this system works reasonably well (though certainly not perfectly) for providing a fair distribution of items.
Ideas however are not subject to the same physical limitations that material objects are. If I communicate an idea to someone else I don't lose the knowledge of that idea or have a reduced ability to use it. Thus the rationale for the notion of property rights, which works for material objects, doesn't apply to ideas. That doesn't necessarily mean that there's no reasoning allowing the restriction of the distribution of ideas, and indeed there is, but it's not property rights.
Creating good ideas (whether inventions, books, songs, movies, etc.) is generally beneficial to society for obvious reasons and thus is an activity that should be encouraged. However, it takes time and effort to create these things, which is time and effort that's not spent doing other things to support the creator.
If there were no protection for ideas those creators wouldn't be able to make money off them, as the ideas could be distributed for free and most people would opt not to pay the creator (or not even know who they were). To allow people to make content professionally society gives them the exclusive right to distribute that content for some period of time. This allows people with the talent to come up with those ideas to do so full-time, thus being able to come up with more of it than they could if they could only focus on it part-time, which in turn benefits society more.
The common term for that is "Intellectual Property", but I think that's a highly misleading term and doesn't reflect the true reasoning behind the concept. In my opinion a better term would be "Exclusive Distribution Rights" (EDR).
So how does all that apply to the main line of argument in this thread?
Common sense dictates that even though nations have no jurisdiction over each other a natural extension of property rights applies to them as well, with each nation owning everything that lies within its borders. If one nation tries to take material objects from another nation without permission the first nation has a range of options extending from doing nothing to declaring war.
However, if we stop using the loaded phrase IP and instead use EDR it becomes clear that the first nation has no rights to control distribution of content in other nations to begin with. The first nation isn't losing an idea when it moves to the second nation, so property rights don't apply, and EDR is not a natural right but instead a created one adopted or not by each nation at its own discretion. A content creator can seek EDR in other countries individually, or two countries can recognize each other's EDR by treaty, but a nation has no obligation to establish its own EDR or recognize the EDR granted by other nations without such a treaty.
The big flaw in your argument is that there is a vast difference between an idea and the expression of an idea. This article is a good discussion of the difference.
How would that apply to services then? Pretty much the only difference between IP "products" and Service "products" is the timing of the work expended by the provider - in both cases the customer is paying for time and expertise, and the provider is not physically being deprived of anything.
Can US companies en masse turn around to India and say, "You know what, the last 6 month of invoices you sent for Call Centre services? We're not going to pay those - we're now transferring all our contracts to County X. And good luck trying to get your government to enforce payment"?
Does it also follow that the first nation (India) has no rights to control usage of services in other nations to begin with?
Assuming the service company isn't insane, a provider and receiver of services are bound by a contract they both signed. If the two parties were in the same country any violation of the contract could be resolved by a breach of contract suit.
If they're not in the same country technically one side could go "Neener neener!" and the other side wouldn't have any direct legal recourse. However, the governments of both sides have an interest in seeing the contract fulfilled or the breacher punished accordingly.
The government of the aggrieved suffers a loss equivalent to the tax value of the money lost by the aggrieved, and would suffer an additional significant loss if businesses lost confidence that the government would support them in similar cases and incorporated elsewhere. Meanwhile, the government of the breacher knows that if they don't enforce the contract other companies will be much less willing to risk contracting with companies in that country and thus also suffer a significant reduction in future tax revenue.
I don't know the specifics, but given how common international contracts are I can't imagine governments don't have methods to enforce fulfillment or punish breaching of contracts with foreign entities.
By contrast with IP/EDR the "contract" is exclusively between one government and its citizens. Nobody in foreign countries signs on to that contract (barring treaties) and thus nobody else is bound by it.
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.
@calixtus - I think you misunderstand me. You are correct that I believe that rights are nothing more than powers that we can assert against a sovereign and which that sovereign will respect. but this limited conception of rights does not mean that a sovereign does not have a legitimate interest in protecting those rights against governments which do not respect them, as I see a sovereign's sole duty as protecting its people. If a nation is weak and cannot assert/protect the rights it has accorded to its citizens, then so be it. But where a nation is stronger than its opponent, why wouldn't it have an interest in asserting its citizens' rights against said opponent. You are taking something I said about Israel (which I believe has an obligation to advance the interest of Israeli citizens only) and trying to make it about why the Israel of this example would NOT have a justification to advance the interests of its citizens ahead of the concerns of another people.
You're assuming "strength" is a viable substitute for "cost" in a cost-benefit analysis. It really isn't.
The interests of the government of Rich Nation in this case is to not to protect the IP of a small subset of its population, because protection would incur costs larger than the benefits. Those costs would also be spread to entites who wouldn't be reaping the majority of those benefits anyway.
Put it like this: You can't coherently make the case that a government has an obligation to its people that allows it to ignore a treaty they have signed, while claiming that the same government has an obligation to enforce a treaty even when doing that enforcing doesn't benefit the people. One is the negation of the other. Hence, the government of Rich Nation has no obligation to enforce a treaty for the sake of enforcing a treaty. Hence, the cost-benefit analysis must take precedent, see above. Hence, no significant action is warranted. Maybe some punitive customs tax somewhere?
And operating under your expressed framework of moral behaviour for nations, it is even easier to demonstrate why the government of Poor Nation shouldn't give a toss about IP rights - because actually abiding by those treaties (or in some cases, signing them in the first place) would be a gross betrayal of their own people.
(One could also point out that there are many different versions of strength, and this
... nations in a position where they are held at the mercy of the weaker nations who do not have as many IP creators, since they can violate IP laws and treaties with near impunity.
is basically you first enshrining "Might Makes Right" as the most hallowed principle of international relations and then complaining about someone "breaking the rules" when they realize that having nothing to lose gives you a very special kind of strength)
Please note that I have said throughout that an actual attack, let alone an invasion, is near unthinkable. Embargoes, sanctions or even blockades seem much more plausible. If direct force were actually used, I can only conceive of it being something like the infringing nation saying it lacks the police power to deal with the problem, and offering to allow the US or the other objecting nation to step in and assist in a police style action.
I would also point out that governments are not beholden to strict cost benefit analysis when determining what furthers the interests of its people. In fact, governments often intercede in other nation's affairs in a way that is probably detrimental to the nation as a whole when individual citizens get embroiled in trials or other situations in other countries.
The special kind of strength you are referring to is only borne of a perverse situation where the global powers have agreed to lay down their arms in exchange for a process which is not capable of solving disputes. This is the entire concept that I am challenging.
Again; What?
Rational actors comply with rules when the cost/benefit argument falls in favor of doing so (psychic costs of being a rule breaker count) but nations don't have the same concerns as individuals when it comes to rules. If we conceive of nations as having an obligation to the people they serve (meaning all citizens in a representative democracy) then they must approach international laws from the standpoint of the costs and benefits to their citizens of a breach. Valuing the costs or benefits to noncitizens of your actions without a clear mandate from your citizens to do so risks harming the people you exist to serve for the benefit of people you have no obligation towards. Like I've said before, this is just Friedman on corporations writ large.
I'm not disagreeing with the idea that governments must look beyond strict cost benefit analysis when determining what furthers the interest of its people. The sanctity of the rule of law, for instance, is something I believe has an intangiable value that cannot accurately be represented in a cost benefit analysis. I have a set of similar things for corporations.
Where I get confused is where you're basically arguing against yourself regarding the validity of international treaties. You'll get a lot more mileage out of this discussion if you choose one coherent opinion on that subject. Either you must enforce international treaties because enforcing the general principle is in the interest of the nation - a concept which you've repeatedly rejected over the years, whether there's a corporation or a nation involved - or you must apply a strict cost/benefit analysis - which readily tells you that for the most part its not worth it. The profits you could capture are too small the warrant the cost of capturing them, outside of existing international frameworks. .
edit: ... outside of existing international frameworks.
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SmasherStarting to get dizzyRegistered Userregular
The big flaw in your argument is that there is a vast difference between an idea and the expression of an idea. This article is a good discussion of the difference.
I'd call that a flaw in my terminology rather than my argument.
I waffled about using "idea" or "content" in my post and ended up using both, but on further reflection I should have stuck with the latter. "Content" is clearer in referring to the actual code/text/images/frames rather than the simple description "idea".
the US is still decidedly affected by material constraints. if you took nuclear weapons off the table, it would probably have lost any conventional war with the USSR over Europe, from the end of WW2 all the way to dissolution. If you put nuclear weapons back on the table, nobody on Earth would have survived anyway, after the 1960s.
now there is no USSR, but the power projection of the PRC is limited only by the fact that it isn't really that interested in power projection. Yet.
But I think I can guess where you are going wrong with this. Consider this thought experiment: there are ten men in a room, of varying strength. The strongest man in the room says: let us beat up the weakest man, and take his stuff, and divide it amongst the better nine.
Of course the second-weakest man objects nonetheless. He can see where this is going. Perform a little induction and the strongest man in the room will find the room unenthusiastic about any proposal.
This is why the international order is built on nominal equalities between state actors that are not of plausibly equal strength. The price to pay to get the B-listers to stop picking fights with the C-listers that will draw the A-listers in, is that the A-listers stop picking fights with the C-listers too. And time and tide will move countries up and down the lists; it is odd today that France is a UNSC permanent member but India is not, but that's how it is. If the UNSC actually reflected prevailing influence, it would be a lot more volatile and therefore a lot weaker.
But they aren't ganging up on the weak man to take his stuff. The weak man is taking from the strong men (but just a little) and yet somehow the strong men can't stop the weak man from continually hurting them in small ways?
The strong man doesn't get to unilaterally decide whose stuff is whose. That's the point. And insofar as ownership is decided by consensus, you get the status quo of compromise. Everyone puts up with a little sand kicked in their faces by the weakling if it means that the musclehead cannot smash concrete blocks in their face instead.
This is all quite aside from notions of justice and considers only what is achievable in a realist outlook.
I thing there is a lot of hyperbole and perhaps some misunderstandings in this thread. I would like to try and clear some of this up and hopefully refocus this discussion.
No one in this thread is advocating a full on military action to defend IP rights. The most that is being advocated is blockades or police efforts. The more likely sanctions would be economic in nature. I would be interested to hear how people feel about economic sanctions, taking the military off the table.
No one in this thread is begrudging poor countries their rightfully held property. The only thing that I believe that anyone is upset over is the unlawful use of IP by nations (or people in those nations) who have not paid for the right to that IP. If anyone in this thread has an argument for why poor countries (or even China) should be allowed to use IP they have not produced or paid for (strictly for copying purposes, not research) other than "IP isn't property" I would be interested to discuss that as well.
Why is anyone upset over the unlawful use of IP by nations that haven't paid for that IP?
Why is it that any given country should care about what is considered IP by companies in another country?
Why is it that any country should care about companies existing primarily within their borders having their IP infringed?
All of these questions are somehow not yet addressed. It is as though you believe IP infringement is some form of base-level moral indignity at which any just person will recoil.
Edit: I mean let's say I create a cartoon character in this thread, call it little Durandal-y and sell statues of it on etsy for $1, and there are knockoffs in Australian markets tomorrow selling for 10 cents to those degraded Aussies.
At what point does anyone beyond myself give a flying fuck, and why?
If I am the US government, I would care a lot. The US produces and exports IP. It's a huge segment of the economy. Infringement lowers my tax base, causes people to lose jobs in America, and erodes America's position as a world leader in thought.
That's strange then. Either the US doesn't care about these issue, or there's some other reason to suffer this indignity and avoid interceding.
Do we have any idea what reasons there might be to not stamp out this sort of infringement?
And why should another country consider what's counted as our IP important?
One of the results of the laws of physics in our universe is that, generally and simplistically speaking, two people can't make full use of one physical object. Two people can't eat the same apple unless they split it in half (in which case neither of them eats as much as if they'd had the whole apple), two people can't use the same car at the same time to go different places, and in general a transfer of an item from one person to another results in the first person losing the use of that item.
To prevent people from stealing from each other all the time we've come up with the concept of property, where any given object has an owner who has full legal control over that object granted to them by the government. When combined with capitalism (which allows for the transfer of an item's control for money) and government enforcement of property rights this system works reasonably well (though certainly not perfectly) for providing a fair distribution of items.
Content however is not subject to the same physical limitations that material objects are. If I communicate content to someone else I don't lose the knowledge of that content or have a reduced ability to use it. Thus the rationale for the notion of property rights, which works for material objects, doesn't apply to content. That doesn't necessarily mean that there's no reasoning allowing the restriction of the distribution of content, and indeed there is, but it's not property rights.
Creating good content (whether inventions, books, songs, movies, etc.) is generally beneficial to society for obvious reasons and thus is an activity that should be encouraged. However, it takes time and effort to create these things, which is time and effort that's not spent doing other things to support the creator.
If there were no protection for content those creators wouldn't be able to make money off it, as the content could be distributed for free and most people would opt not to pay the creator (or not even know who they were). To allow people to make content professionally society gives them the exclusive right to distribute that content for some period of time. This allows people with the talent to come up with that content to do so full-time, thus being able to come up with more of it than they could if they could only focus on it part-time, which in turn benefits society more.
The common term for that is "Intellectual Property", but I think that's a highly misleading term and doesn't reflect the true reasoning behind the concept. In my opinion a better term would be "Exclusive Distribution Rights" (EDR).
So how does all that apply to the main line of argument in this thread?
Common sense dictates that even though nations have no jurisdiction over each other a natural extension of property rights applies to them as well, with each nation owning everything that lies within its borders. If one nation tries to take material objects from another nation without permission the first nation has a range of options extending from doing nothing to declaring war.
However, if we stop using the loaded phrase IP and instead use EDR it becomes clear that the first nation has no rights to control distribution of content in other nations to begin with. The first nation isn't losing content when it moves to the second nation, so property rights don't apply, and EDR is not a natural right but instead a created one adopted or not by each nation at its own discretion. A content creator can seek EDR in other countries individually, or two countries can recognize each other's EDR by treaty, but a nation has no obligation to establish its own EDR or recognize the EDR granted by other nations without such a treaty.
e: Fixed terminology (Idea->Content)
I disagree with this post in the strongest terms possible. I do not agree that there is such a thing as a "natural right" (what possible meaning is there to a right which is "natural" but not recognized by your government?).
More importantly, I disagree with your physical/concept distinction based on the ability to consume the good. The right that we care about when considering IP is the right to exclusive control over the idea's use. This is identical to the right to exclusive control over physical property. If I am at work and you come sit in my house but don't move or ruin anything, you have still wronged me even though I lost nothing physical, because you have taken my right to the exclusive control of my home. Using my IP without my permission is similarly a violation of my exclusive right of control. I have rights in my home because I built or purchased it. You do not because you did neither. I have exclusive rights over my IP because I created or purchased it. You do not because you did neither.
Your consumption approach is also wrong because, unlike a single apple where the value is in that limited matter making up the apple, if I can produce an indefinite amount of physical goods based on my IP, then you have taken the value of my IP from me when you decrease my potential market by making one of the IP based goods that I sell just as completely as you would take value from my apple by taking a bite.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
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.
@calixtus - I think you misunderstand me. You are correct that I believe that rights are nothing more than powers that we can assert against a sovereign and which that sovereign will respect. but this limited conception of rights does not mean that a sovereign does not have a legitimate interest in protecting those rights against governments which do not respect them, as I see a sovereign's sole duty as protecting its people. If a nation is weak and cannot assert/protect the rights it has accorded to its citizens, then so be it. But where a nation is stronger than its opponent, why wouldn't it have an interest in asserting its citizens' rights against said opponent. You are taking something I said about Israel (which I believe has an obligation to advance the interest of Israeli citizens only) and trying to make it about why the Israel of this example would NOT have a justification to advance the interests of its citizens ahead of the concerns of another people.
You're assuming "strength" is a viable substitute for "cost" in a cost-benefit analysis. It really isn't.
The interests of the government of Rich Nation in this case is to not to protect the IP of a small subset of its population, because protection would incur costs larger than the benefits. Those costs would also be spread to entites who wouldn't be reaping the majority of those benefits anyway.
Put it like this: You can't coherently make the case that a government has an obligation to its people that allows it to ignore a treaty they have signed, while claiming that the same government has an obligation to enforce a treaty even when doing that enforcing doesn't benefit the people. One is the negation of the other. Hence, the government of Rich Nation has no obligation to enforce a treaty for the sake of enforcing a treaty. Hence, the cost-benefit analysis must take precedent, see above. Hence, no significant action is warranted. Maybe some punitive customs tax somewhere?
And operating under your expressed framework of moral behaviour for nations, it is even easier to demonstrate why the government of Poor Nation shouldn't give a toss about IP rights - because actually abiding by those treaties (or in some cases, signing them in the first place) would be a gross betrayal of their own people.
(One could also point out that there are many different versions of strength, and this
... nations in a position where they are held at the mercy of the weaker nations who do not have as many IP creators, since they can violate IP laws and treaties with near impunity.
is basically you first enshrining "Might Makes Right" as the most hallowed principle of international relations and then complaining about someone "breaking the rules" when they realize that having nothing to lose gives you a very special kind of strength)
Please note that I have said throughout that an actual attack, let alone an invasion, is near unthinkable. Embargoes, sanctions or even blockades seem much more plausible. If direct force were actually used, I can only conceive of it being something like the infringing nation saying it lacks the police power to deal with the problem, and offering to allow the US or the other objecting nation to step in and assist in a police style action.
I would also point out that governments are not beholden to strict cost benefit analysis when determining what furthers the interests of its people. In fact, governments often intercede in other nation's affairs in a way that is probably detrimental to the nation as a whole when individual citizens get embroiled in trials or other situations in other countries.
The special kind of strength you are referring to is only borne of a perverse situation where the global powers have agreed to lay down their arms in exchange for a process which is not capable of solving disputes. This is the entire concept that I am challenging.
Again; What?
Rational actors comply with rules when the cost/benefit argument falls in favor of doing so (psychic costs of being a rule breaker count) but nations don't have the same concerns as individuals when it comes to rules. If we conceive of nations as having an obligation to the people they serve (meaning all citizens in a representative democracy) then they must approach international laws from the standpoint of the costs and benefits to their citizens of a breach. Valuing the costs or benefits to noncitizens of your actions without a clear mandate from your citizens to do so risks harming the people you exist to serve for the benefit of people you have no obligation towards. Like I've said before, this is just Friedman on corporations writ large.
I'm not disagreeing with the idea that governments must look beyond strict cost benefit analysis when determining what furthers the interest of its people. The sanctity of the rule of law, for instance, is something I believe has an intangiable value that cannot accurately be represented in a cost benefit analysis. I have a set of similar things for corporations.
Where I get confused is where you're basically arguing against yourself regarding the validity of international treaties. You'll get a lot more mileage out of this discussion if you choose one coherent opinion on that subject. Either you must enforce international treaties because enforcing the general principle is in the interest of the nation - a concept which you've repeatedly rejected over the years, whether there's a corporation or a nation involved - or you must apply a strict cost/benefit analysis - which readily tells you that for the most part its not worth it. The profits you could capture are too small the warrant the cost of capturing them, outside of existing international frameworks. .
edit: ... outside of existing international frameworks.
You have found a contradiction in phrasing, not concepts (and pulling from a different topic, I might add). In the second post I was saying that a government should only be concerned with the well being of its own people, not with the well being of outsiders. Saying that a country can look at more than strict CBA in advancing its people's interests is not a contradiction here. It just exposes a hastily phrased post in the prior topic.
I would agree that a nation which can get away with IP theft (like China) may benefit its people by engaging in such theft (at least until they become an idea powerhouse like the US). But importantly, I think they only benefit because they are in a position which prevents anyone from stopping them. By contrast, if the WIPO or WTO weren't so ineffectual, then I would like to think that it would not be a net benefit for poorer nations to steal IP. And if those poor nations are of little benefit to the US and its citizens, then I would argue that (depending in the international climate) the US may well benefit from adopting financially ruinous policies towards the thieving, weaker countries, which would similarly shift the needle on how those countries should behave.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
the US is still decidedly affected by material constraints. if you took nuclear weapons off the table, it would probably have lost any conventional war with the USSR over Europe, from the end of WW2 all the way to dissolution. If you put nuclear weapons back on the table, nobody on Earth would have survived anyway, after the 1960s.
now there is no USSR, but the power projection of the PRC is limited only by the fact that it isn't really that interested in power projection. Yet.
But I think I can guess where you are going wrong with this. Consider this thought experiment: there are ten men in a room, of varying strength. The strongest man in the room says: let us beat up the weakest man, and take his stuff, and divide it amongst the better nine.
Of course the second-weakest man objects nonetheless. He can see where this is going. Perform a little induction and the strongest man in the room will find the room unenthusiastic about any proposal.
This is why the international order is built on nominal equalities between state actors that are not of plausibly equal strength. The price to pay to get the B-listers to stop picking fights with the C-listers that will draw the A-listers in, is that the A-listers stop picking fights with the C-listers too. And time and tide will move countries up and down the lists; it is odd today that France is a UNSC permanent member but India is not, but that's how it is. If the UNSC actually reflected prevailing influence, it would be a lot more volatile and therefore a lot weaker.
But they aren't ganging up on the weak man to take his stuff. The weak man is taking from the strong men (but just a little) and yet somehow the strong men can't stop the weak man from continually hurting them in small ways?
The strong man doesn't get to unilaterally decide whose stuff is whose. That's the point. And insofar as ownership is decided by consensus, you get the status quo of compromise. Everyone puts up with a little sand kicked in their faces by the weakling if it means that the musclehead cannot smash concrete blocks in their face instead.
This is all quite aside from notions of justice and considers only what is achievable in a realist outlook.
Hold on. In this case, the weakling only hurts the strong, and the strong never retaliate. This isn't a compromise, this sounds like everyone accepting injury from the bad actor because they have an irrational fear of their peer group, whose interests are perfectly aligned.
If the world consisted of the US, Germany, Israel and Chad, and each of the first three created IP and respected each others' IP and then Chad kept unrepentantly taking their IP, do you really think this status quo would just continue forever?
the US is still decidedly affected by material constraints. if you took nuclear weapons off the table, it would probably have lost any conventional war with the USSR over Europe, from the end of WW2 all the way to dissolution. If you put nuclear weapons back on the table, nobody on Earth would have survived anyway, after the 1960s.
now there is no USSR, but the power projection of the PRC is limited only by the fact that it isn't really that interested in power projection. Yet.
But I think I can guess where you are going wrong with this. Consider this thought experiment: there are ten men in a room, of varying strength. The strongest man in the room says: let us beat up the weakest man, and take his stuff, and divide it amongst the better nine.
Of course the second-weakest man objects nonetheless. He can see where this is going. Perform a little induction and the strongest man in the room will find the room unenthusiastic about any proposal.
This is why the international order is built on nominal equalities between state actors that are not of plausibly equal strength. The price to pay to get the B-listers to stop picking fights with the C-listers that will draw the A-listers in, is that the A-listers stop picking fights with the C-listers too. And time and tide will move countries up and down the lists; it is odd today that France is a UNSC permanent member but India is not, but that's how it is. If the UNSC actually reflected prevailing influence, it would be a lot more volatile and therefore a lot weaker.
But they aren't ganging up on the weak man to take his stuff. The weak man is taking from the strong men (but just a little) and yet somehow the strong men can't stop the weak man from continually hurting them in small ways?
The strong man doesn't get to unilaterally decide whose stuff is whose. That's the point. And insofar as ownership is decided by consensus, you get the status quo of compromise. Everyone puts up with a little sand kicked in their faces by the weakling if it means that the musclehead cannot smash concrete blocks in their face instead.
This is all quite aside from notions of justice and considers only what is achievable in a realist outlook.
Hold on. In this case, the weakling only hurts the strong, and the strong never retaliate. This isn't a compromise, this sounds like everyone accepting injury from the bad actor because they have an irrational fear of their peer group, whose interests are perfectly aligned.
If the world consisted of the US, Germany, Israel and Chad, and each of the first three created IP and respected each others' IP and then Chad kept unrepentantly taking their IP, do you really think this status quo would just continue forever?
but they aren't perfectly aligned. the strong group are not certain that they are as strong as each other, or that they will remain in that happy club forever. we have a terror today of industrial war not because small countries bicker but because large countries might.
and, as a reminder, there is always the very attractive prospect where hypothetical Chad promises hypothetical Israel that it will respect Israel's IP but not Germany's if Israel protects it from any German retaliation, and splits the gains from German IP with Israel.
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Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
The right that we care about when considering IP is the right to exclusive control over the idea's use. This is identical to the right to exclusive control over physical property. If I am at work and you come sit in my house but don't move or ruin anything, you have still wronged me even though I lost nothing physical, because you have taken my right to the exclusive control of my home.
Would you ever bother to sue anyone that actually did this, though? You'd be awarded nominal damages, and without a substantial punitive damage award (relatively unlikely) you'd probably take a net loss on legal fees and fail to seriously deter future trespasses. (In this analogy, these are unilateral economic sanctions.)
To effectively deter people from trespassing into your home you would rely on the state, i.e., call the cops, have the trespasser arrested, perhaps testify at hearings or a trial at the request of your local DA. (This would be the WTO in this analogy, imperfect as it is.) And if the trespasser is found innocent, or the DA decides the case isn't worth his office's time, or there's a plea deal and the trespasser only gets a few years of probation, you probably wouldn't be happy...but I'd doubt you'd become a vigilante and go after him yourself, either.
I thing there is a lot of hyperbole and perhaps some misunderstandings in this thread. I would like to try and clear some of this up and hopefully refocus this discussion.
No one in this thread is advocating a full on military action to defend IP rights. The most that is being advocated is blockades or police efforts. The more likely sanctions would be economic in nature. I would be interested to hear how people feel about economic sanctions, taking the military off the table.
No one in this thread is begrudging poor countries their rightfully held property. The only thing that I believe that anyone is upset over is the unlawful use of IP by nations (or people in those nations) who have not paid for the right to that IP. If anyone in this thread has an argument for why poor countries (or even China) should be allowed to use IP they have not produced or paid for (strictly for copying purposes, not research) other than "IP isn't property" I would be interested to discuss that as well.
Why is anyone upset over the unlawful use of IP by nations that haven't paid for that IP?
Why is it that any given country should care about what is considered IP by companies in another country?
Why is it that any country should care about companies existing primarily within their borders having their IP infringed?
All of these questions are somehow not yet addressed. It is as though you believe IP infringement is some form of base-level moral indignity at which any just person will recoil.
Edit: I mean let's say I create a cartoon character in this thread, call it little Durandal-y and sell statues of it on etsy for $1, and there are knockoffs in Australian markets tomorrow selling for 10 cents to those degraded Aussies.
At what point does anyone beyond myself give a flying fuck, and why?
If I am the US government, I would care a lot. The US produces and exports IP. It's a huge segment of the economy. Infringement lowers my tax base, causes people to lose jobs in America, and erodes America's position as a world leader in thought.
That's strange then. Either the US doesn't care about these issue, or there's some other reason to suffer this indignity and avoid interceding.
Do we have any idea what reasons there might be to not stamp out this sort of infringement?
And why should another country consider what's counted as our IP important?
My view is that the international bodies we have tasked with enforcement lack the authority needed to effectively fulfill their mandate. This is an endemic problem worth international relations, all of which I basically view as a friendly face with a veiled fist.
The powerful not being able to control the weak isn't perverse, it's ironic. And possibly just. Unless one is embarrassingly ignorant of history enough to believe the strong became strong without ever hurting or stealing from the weak.
Cluster bombing villages because someone has a knock-off handbag isn't really what anyone is talking about here, it's so much strawman and hyperbole that it's ridiculous.
In my mind, various forms of military intervention fall near the far end of the 'acceptable action' spectrum. I think there are going to be very few cases where military action would actually make sense - the harm is very rarely going to make that a rational response. Military action is expensive in direct and political costs, it's going to be particularly effective against most IP theft, the optics are probably going to be terrible, and there are other avenues that are simply...better.
But, military action is at the end of a spectrum that starts at 'politely worded letters' and ranges through a whole host of diplomatic and economic actions. I would think bombing a village that's sewing Armeni handbags to sell on the streets of NYC is absurd and counterproductive, but I can't say it's entirely outside the realm of possibility that a navy would interdict and seize a cargo ship full of counterfeit goods. That's still military action, and I could see an extreme situation where that would be justifiable. Or maybe a smart bomb (or satchel charge) hitting the North Korean facility that houses their $100 bill manufacturing program.
In general though, IP theft in the 3rd world is going to be so pointless to counter that it's effectively meaningless. The amount of profits being lost are negligible and in a lot of cases the IP holders choose to not even enter or compete in those markets. There are a variety of methods IP holders can use to 'protect' their brand from counterfeits shipped to the 1st world - branding, holograms, consumer information, legal action within the first world, etc.
It's a bit different with copyright, but for patented items / technologies, by electing to remain outside of these 3rd world markets, IP holders have effectively ceded the market. Basically, if they refuse to enter a given market under the laws that govern that market, they can't suffer harm when someone else does. Without harm / damages, there really isn't much of a claim.
I agree completely until the last two paragraphs. Waiting and timing your entry into a market is valid. Apple, Sony, etc all release products in different markets at different times. I don't see how that makes IP violation acceptable until the day their marketing plan calls for a local roll out.
What if the IP holder is participating, but the market has been inundated with knock offs for years and so even the discounted price is "too high" by local standards because they are used to bear free? Is that not a harm?
Now, I'll say again that I consider there to be a bit of difference between something with a copyright and something like a drug, gene sequence, or industrial process. The item with a copyright was something CREATED, while the drug, gene sequence, industrial process, recipe, etc was something DISCOVERED. I am...not in agreement with your opinion regarding copyright, but much closer to your opinion with something created vs. discovered.
Either way though, IP laws exist for the purpose of encouraging further discoveries or creations for the purpose of benefiting and enriching humanity. The fact that they protect profits is incidental to that purpose. Anytime profits / property rights are at odds with the purpose of benefiting / enriching humanity, the rights of the property holder should invariably be secondary. Granted that a lot of the benefit / enrich humanity is either intangible or needs to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
This is like the most wrong wrong can be. Their protecting of profits is the thing that allows them to fulfill their purpose.
The point I'm trying to make is that the purpose of patent, copyright, and other IP law is "To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
The purpose is to promote progress, the method is securing exclusive rights to the creator / discoverers. This protects profits, because that's what the 'exclusive Rights' portion basically boils down to, but protecting profits is the means to an end, not the end in and of itself. If a law fails to serve it's purpose, it's inherently unjust.
Now, I acknowledged that the progress (in the sense of benefiting / enriching humanity) can be intangible in a lot of cases and often comes down to a case-by-case basis, but profits don't or shouldn't be the only consideration when it comes to IP law and enforcement. There is definite push and pull, and it's going to be very difficult to craft 'one size fits all' laws - the patents on an iPhone may stifle progress by HTC or Samsung, while a law that promotes progress in that market may put Pfizer right out of business.
There is also a lot of negotiation to be had over what 'limited Times' and 'exclusive Right' actually mean. Exclusive is not equal to absolute. Considering that pretty much all drugs and a lot of other technologies - at some point in the development or testing - use some form of Federal Grant money or subsidization, there is a good case to be made for some aspects to be 'public domain'.
The powerful not being able to control the weak isn't perverse, it's ironic. And possibly just. Unless one is embarrassingly ignorant of history enough to believe the strong became strong without ever hurting or stealing from the weak.
Even more ironic is that America became as it is today because we completely disregarded IP law whenever it was convenient to do so. Our industrial revolution was lifted more or less wholesale from Europe. Hollywood only exists to escape IP regulation.
There is nothing to stop this from happening. Going to war over it is idiotic. You spend more doing that than you ever would getting poor countries to respect IP. Hell, the corporations responsible would be spending more in bribes to politicians to get the war started than they would get in return, so that's a non-starter. Sanctions are an option, but good luck getting the 1st world to agree to sanctions against a country trying to provide medicine to their citizenry; they all have universal healthcare.
Let's also not forget that some of the major offenders of IP violations are not poor. China is the second biggest boy on the block in economy and they will be the first soon enough. Are we going to invade China to protect the sanctity of Mickey Mouse?
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
US drug companies routinely go into native, tribal lands of the Amazon take their medicinal herbs and what not, come back and then poof you have a IP protected drug. Why should the US be allowed to steal medicinal supplies and claim it as their own?
In another point third party drugs are there because no one in their right mind in the third world wants to pay $200+ for one single dose or pill. If the medicinal companies had their intent correct that their job is to save the world they wouldn't be charging that price.
I fully support IP infringement on articles of health or well being. No one in their right mind, the poor especially, should pay astronomical fees for health. If the US drug companies don't like it they can go suck a lemon.
. . . You're kidding. The defender of entrenched genetic nobility is defending the subversion of traditional power structures by the poor? Or does the claim of the IP holders not count because they had to actually work to create it, instead of receiving it as a bequest from a long dead relative?
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
the US is still decidedly affected by material constraints. if you took nuclear weapons off the table, it would probably have lost any conventional war with the USSR over Europe, from the end of WW2 all the way to dissolution. If you put nuclear weapons back on the table, nobody on Earth would have survived anyway, after the 1960s.
now there is no USSR, but the power projection of the PRC is limited only by the fact that it isn't really that interested in power projection. Yet.
But I think I can guess where you are going wrong with this. Consider this thought experiment: there are ten men in a room, of varying strength. The strongest man in the room says: let us beat up the weakest man, and take his stuff, and divide it amongst the better nine.
Of course the second-weakest man objects nonetheless. He can see where this is going. Perform a little induction and the strongest man in the room will find the room unenthusiastic about any proposal.
This is why the international order is built on nominal equalities between state actors that are not of plausibly equal strength. The price to pay to get the B-listers to stop picking fights with the C-listers that will draw the A-listers in, is that the A-listers stop picking fights with the C-listers too. And time and tide will move countries up and down the lists; it is odd today that France is a UNSC permanent member but India is not, but that's how it is. If the UNSC actually reflected prevailing influence, it would be a lot more volatile and therefore a lot weaker.
But they aren't ganging up on the weak man to take his stuff. The weak man is taking from the strong men (but just a little) and yet somehow the strong men can't stop the weak man from continually hurting them in small ways?
The strong man doesn't get to unilaterally decide whose stuff is whose. That's the point. And insofar as ownership is decided by consensus, you get the status quo of compromise. Everyone puts up with a little sand kicked in their faces by the weakling if it means that the musclehead cannot smash concrete blocks in their face instead.
This is all quite aside from notions of justice and considers only what is achievable in a realist outlook.
Hold on. In this case, the weakling only hurts the strong, and the strong never retaliate. This isn't a compromise, this sounds like everyone accepting injury from the bad actor because they have an irrational fear of their peer group, whose interests are perfectly aligned.
If the world consisted of the US, Germany, Israel and Chad, and each of the first three created IP and respected each others' IP and then Chad kept unrepentantly taking their IP, do you really think this status quo would just continue forever?
but they aren't perfectly aligned. the strong group are not certain that they are as strong as each other, or that they will remain in that happy club forever. we have a terror today of industrial war not because small countries bicker but because large countries might.
and, as a reminder, there is always the very attractive prospect where hypothetical Chad promises hypothetical Israel that it will respect Israel's IP but not Germany's if Israel protects it from any German retaliation, and splits the gains from German IP with Israel.
Why would Israel prefer to deal with Chad, which is the only nation which has proven itself untrustworthy in the first place and has nothing of value to offer, instead of the US and Germany?
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
The right that we care about when considering IP is the right to exclusive control over the idea's use. This is identical to the right to exclusive control over physical property. If I am at work and you come sit in my house but don't move or ruin anything, you have still wronged me even though I lost nothing physical, because you have taken my right to the exclusive control of my home.
Would you ever bother to sue anyone that actually did this, though? You'd be awarded nominal damages, and without a substantial punitive damage award (relatively unlikely) you'd probably take a net loss on legal fees and fail to seriously deter future trespasses. (In this analogy, these are unilateral economic sanctions.)
To effectively deter people from trespassing into your home you would rely on the state, i.e., call the cops, have the trespasser arrested, perhaps testify at hearings or a trial at the request of your local DA. (This would be the WTO in this analogy, imperfect as it is.) And if the trespasser is found innocent, or the DA decides the case isn't worth his office's time, or there's a plea deal and the trespasser only gets a few years of probation, you probably wouldn't be happy...but I'd doubt you'd become a vigilante and go after him yourself, either.
And when the state systematically fails to defend your claim? That is precisely when a state starts to lose its legitimacy in the eyes of its people, who do resort to self help. It doesn't happen after they fail once, but if the guy is in my house every day and the state won't stop him? I'm not going to tolerate that forever.
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Like, flip him the bird before you get in your Lexus he just cleaned while not coughing up blood or whatever.
There is a difference between being guaranteed a profit and not having to compete with illicit copies of your product undercutting you.
You can't guarantee profits.
If you don't pay your fines, you get penalties.
If you don't pay your penalties, you get a summons.
If you don't attend your summons, you get an injunction.
If you don't comply with your injunction, you get an arrest warrant issued.
If you don't comply with your arrest, the police will attempt to subdue you.
If you resist subdual, the police will typically escalate force...
It's not at all uncommon for the penalties to grow to be disproportionate with the offense if the offender continues to ignore attempts to enforce compliance. The logical (but not inevitable) conclusion of that is "Follow the law or die". With respect to countries and international law, if you can't escalate the chain you end up with Best Korea - an ostracized country with few friends, who routinely rocks the boat and threatens to test nuclear weapon until it gets more aid. No-one else wants to be best Korea, but at this point with all the sanctions etc. in place there's almost nothing more anyone else can do to enforce compliance except invade - and that's not going to happen any time soon.
No one in this thread is advocating a full on military action to defend IP rights. The most that is being advocated is blockades or police efforts. The more likely sanctions would be economic in nature. I would be interested to hear how people feel about economic sanctions, taking the military off the table.
No one in this thread is begrudging poor countries their rightfully held property. The only thing that I believe that anyone is upset over is the unlawful use of IP by nations (or people in those nations) who have not paid for the right to that IP. If anyone in this thread has an argument for why poor countries (or even China) should be allowed to use IP they have not produced or paid for (strictly for copying purposes, not research) other than "IP isn't property" I would be interested to discuss that as well.
Consent of the country? That is what I was talking about.
Why is anyone upset over the unlawful use of IP by nations that have paid for that IP?
Why is it that any given country should care about what is considered IP by companies in another country?
Why is it that any country should care about companies existing primarily within their borders having their IP infringed?
All of these questions are somehow not yet addressed. It is as though you believe IP infringement is some form of base-level moral indignity at which any just person will recoil.
Edit: I mean let's say I create a cartoon character in this thread, call it little Durandal-y and sell statues of it on etsy for $1, and there are knockoffs in Australian markets tomorrow selling for 10 cents to those degraded Aussies.
At what point does anyone beyond myself give a flying fuck, and why?
And it's a lot harder to make a profit when the other guy is undercutting you with your own product.
I give a flying fuck, and it's because the same laws that protect you, protect me. As I pointed out in chat earlier, part of the reason people don't care about copyright is because they don't see how it protects them. When they do see how it protects them (for example, when Instagram tried to change their ToS to allow them use of their members' pictures), they tend to be supportive of it.
If I am the US government, I would care a lot. The US produces and exports IP. It's a huge segment of the economy. Infringement lowers my tax base, causes people to lose jobs in America, and erodes America's position as a world leader in thought.
The business sector is doing a really lousy job trying to keep employment a high priority in America. This is part of the problem the nation is losing its strength as a world leader. America no longer gives a fuck about being the best in the world it wants to outsource to third world countries to preserve the profits for the wealthy class and let the middle class die.
Pass.
We have the WTO and TRIPS already; there's no need to muddy the waters with unilateral actions.
To prevent people from stealing from each other all the time we've come up with the concept of property, where any given object has an owner who has full legal control over that object granted to them by the government. When combined with capitalism (which allows for the transfer of an item's control for money) and government enforcement of property rights this system works reasonably well (though certainly not perfectly) for providing a fair distribution of items.
Content however is not subject to the same physical limitations that material objects are. If I communicate content to someone else I don't lose the knowledge of that content or have a reduced ability to use it. Thus the rationale for the notion of property rights, which works for material objects, doesn't apply to content. That doesn't necessarily mean that there's no reasoning allowing the restriction of the distribution of content, and indeed there is, but it's not property rights.
Creating good content (whether inventions, books, songs, movies, etc.) is generally beneficial to society for obvious reasons and thus is an activity that should be encouraged. However, it takes time and effort to create these things, which is time and effort that's not spent doing other things to support the creator.
If there were no protection for content those creators wouldn't be able to make money off it, as the content could be distributed for free and most people would opt not to pay the creator (or not even know who they were). To allow people to make content professionally society gives them the exclusive right to distribute that content for some period of time. This allows people with the talent to come up with that content to do so full-time, thus being able to come up with more of it than they could if they could only focus on it part-time, which in turn benefits society more.
The common term for that is "Intellectual Property", but I think that's a highly misleading term and doesn't reflect the true reasoning behind the concept. In my opinion a better term would be "Exclusive Distribution Rights" (EDR).
So how does all that apply to the main line of argument in this thread?
Common sense dictates that even though nations have no jurisdiction over each other a natural extension of property rights applies to them as well, with each nation owning everything that lies within its borders. If one nation tries to take material objects from another nation without permission the first nation has a range of options extending from doing nothing to declaring war.
However, if we stop using the loaded phrase IP and instead use EDR it becomes clear that the first nation has no rights to control distribution of content in other nations to begin with. The first nation isn't losing content when it moves to the second nation, so property rights don't apply, and EDR is not a natural right but instead a created one adopted or not by each nation at its own discretion. A content creator can seek EDR in other countries individually, or two countries can recognize each other's EDR by treaty, but a nation has no obligation to establish its own EDR or recognize the EDR granted by other nations without such a treaty.
e: Fixed terminology (Idea->Content)
Can US companies en masse turn around to India and say, "You know what, the last 6 month of invoices you sent for Call Centre services? We're not going to pay those - we're now transferring all our contracts to County X. And good luck trying to get your government to enforce payment"?
Does it also follow that the first nation (India) has no rights to control usage of services in other nations to begin with?
The big flaw in your argument is that there is a vast difference between an idea and the expression of an idea. This article is a good discussion of the difference.
If they're not in the same country technically one side could go "Neener neener!" and the other side wouldn't have any direct legal recourse. However, the governments of both sides have an interest in seeing the contract fulfilled or the breacher punished accordingly.
The government of the aggrieved suffers a loss equivalent to the tax value of the money lost by the aggrieved, and would suffer an additional significant loss if businesses lost confidence that the government would support them in similar cases and incorporated elsewhere. Meanwhile, the government of the breacher knows that if they don't enforce the contract other companies will be much less willing to risk contracting with companies in that country and thus also suffer a significant reduction in future tax revenue.
I don't know the specifics, but given how common international contracts are I can't imagine governments don't have methods to enforce fulfillment or punish breaching of contracts with foreign entities.
By contrast with IP/EDR the "contract" is exclusively between one government and its citizens. Nobody in foreign countries signs on to that contract (barring treaties) and thus nobody else is bound by it.
Where I get confused is where you're basically arguing against yourself regarding the validity of international treaties. You'll get a lot more mileage out of this discussion if you choose one coherent opinion on that subject. Either you must enforce international treaties because enforcing the general principle is in the interest of the nation - a concept which you've repeatedly rejected over the years, whether there's a corporation or a nation involved - or you must apply a strict cost/benefit analysis - which readily tells you that for the most part its not worth it. The profits you could capture are too small the warrant the cost of capturing them, outside of existing international frameworks. .
edit: ... outside of existing international frameworks.
I waffled about using "idea" or "content" in my post and ended up using both, but on further reflection I should have stuck with the latter. "Content" is clearer in referring to the actual code/text/images/frames rather than the simple description "idea".
The strong man doesn't get to unilaterally decide whose stuff is whose. That's the point. And insofar as ownership is decided by consensus, you get the status quo of compromise. Everyone puts up with a little sand kicked in their faces by the weakling if it means that the musclehead cannot smash concrete blocks in their face instead.
This is all quite aside from notions of justice and considers only what is achievable in a realist outlook.
That's strange then. Either the US doesn't care about these issue, or there's some other reason to suffer this indignity and avoid interceding.
Do we have any idea what reasons there might be to not stamp out this sort of infringement?
And why should another country consider what's counted as our IP important?
I disagree with this post in the strongest terms possible. I do not agree that there is such a thing as a "natural right" (what possible meaning is there to a right which is "natural" but not recognized by your government?).
More importantly, I disagree with your physical/concept distinction based on the ability to consume the good. The right that we care about when considering IP is the right to exclusive control over the idea's use. This is identical to the right to exclusive control over physical property. If I am at work and you come sit in my house but don't move or ruin anything, you have still wronged me even though I lost nothing physical, because you have taken my right to the exclusive control of my home. Using my IP without my permission is similarly a violation of my exclusive right of control. I have rights in my home because I built or purchased it. You do not because you did neither. I have exclusive rights over my IP because I created or purchased it. You do not because you did neither.
Your consumption approach is also wrong because, unlike a single apple where the value is in that limited matter making up the apple, if I can produce an indefinite amount of physical goods based on my IP, then you have taken the value of my IP from me when you decrease my potential market by making one of the IP based goods that I sell just as completely as you would take value from my apple by taking a bite.
You have found a contradiction in phrasing, not concepts (and pulling from a different topic, I might add). In the second post I was saying that a government should only be concerned with the well being of its own people, not with the well being of outsiders. Saying that a country can look at more than strict CBA in advancing its people's interests is not a contradiction here. It just exposes a hastily phrased post in the prior topic.
I would agree that a nation which can get away with IP theft (like China) may benefit its people by engaging in such theft (at least until they become an idea powerhouse like the US). But importantly, I think they only benefit because they are in a position which prevents anyone from stopping them. By contrast, if the WIPO or WTO weren't so ineffectual, then I would like to think that it would not be a net benefit for poorer nations to steal IP. And if those poor nations are of little benefit to the US and its citizens, then I would argue that (depending in the international climate) the US may well benefit from adopting financially ruinous policies towards the thieving, weaker countries, which would similarly shift the needle on how those countries should behave.
Hold on. In this case, the weakling only hurts the strong, and the strong never retaliate. This isn't a compromise, this sounds like everyone accepting injury from the bad actor because they have an irrational fear of their peer group, whose interests are perfectly aligned.
If the world consisted of the US, Germany, Israel and Chad, and each of the first three created IP and respected each others' IP and then Chad kept unrepentantly taking their IP, do you really think this status quo would just continue forever?
but they aren't perfectly aligned. the strong group are not certain that they are as strong as each other, or that they will remain in that happy club forever. we have a terror today of industrial war not because small countries bicker but because large countries might.
and, as a reminder, there is always the very attractive prospect where hypothetical Chad promises hypothetical Israel that it will respect Israel's IP but not Germany's if Israel protects it from any German retaliation, and splits the gains from German IP with Israel.
Would you ever bother to sue anyone that actually did this, though? You'd be awarded nominal damages, and without a substantial punitive damage award (relatively unlikely) you'd probably take a net loss on legal fees and fail to seriously deter future trespasses. (In this analogy, these are unilateral economic sanctions.)
To effectively deter people from trespassing into your home you would rely on the state, i.e., call the cops, have the trespasser arrested, perhaps testify at hearings or a trial at the request of your local DA. (This would be the WTO in this analogy, imperfect as it is.) And if the trespasser is found innocent, or the DA decides the case isn't worth his office's time, or there's a plea deal and the trespasser only gets a few years of probation, you probably wouldn't be happy...but I'd doubt you'd become a vigilante and go after him yourself, either.
My view is that the international bodies we have tasked with enforcement lack the authority needed to effectively fulfill their mandate. This is an endemic problem worth international relations, all of which I basically view as a friendly face with a veiled fist.
@tinwhiskers
The point I'm trying to make is that the purpose of patent, copyright, and other IP law is "To promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
The purpose is to promote progress, the method is securing exclusive rights to the creator / discoverers. This protects profits, because that's what the 'exclusive Rights' portion basically boils down to, but protecting profits is the means to an end, not the end in and of itself. If a law fails to serve it's purpose, it's inherently unjust.
Now, I acknowledged that the progress (in the sense of benefiting / enriching humanity) can be intangible in a lot of cases and often comes down to a case-by-case basis, but profits don't or shouldn't be the only consideration when it comes to IP law and enforcement. There is definite push and pull, and it's going to be very difficult to craft 'one size fits all' laws - the patents on an iPhone may stifle progress by HTC or Samsung, while a law that promotes progress in that market may put Pfizer right out of business.
There is also a lot of negotiation to be had over what 'limited Times' and 'exclusive Right' actually mean. Exclusive is not equal to absolute. Considering that pretty much all drugs and a lot of other technologies - at some point in the development or testing - use some form of Federal Grant money or subsidization, there is a good case to be made for some aspects to be 'public domain'.
Even more ironic is that America became as it is today because we completely disregarded IP law whenever it was convenient to do so. Our industrial revolution was lifted more or less wholesale from Europe. Hollywood only exists to escape IP regulation.
There is nothing to stop this from happening. Going to war over it is idiotic. You spend more doing that than you ever would getting poor countries to respect IP. Hell, the corporations responsible would be spending more in bribes to politicians to get the war started than they would get in return, so that's a non-starter. Sanctions are an option, but good luck getting the 1st world to agree to sanctions against a country trying to provide medicine to their citizenry; they all have universal healthcare.
Let's also not forget that some of the major offenders of IP violations are not poor. China is the second biggest boy on the block in economy and they will be the first soon enough. Are we going to invade China to protect the sanctity of Mickey Mouse?
. . . You're kidding. The defender of entrenched genetic nobility is defending the subversion of traditional power structures by the poor? Or does the claim of the IP holders not count because they had to actually work to create it, instead of receiving it as a bequest from a long dead relative?
Why would Israel prefer to deal with Chad, which is the only nation which has proven itself untrustworthy in the first place and has nothing of value to offer, instead of the US and Germany?
And when the state systematically fails to defend your claim? That is precisely when a state starts to lose its legitimacy in the eyes of its people, who do resort to self help. It doesn't happen after they fail once, but if the guy is in my house every day and the state won't stop him? I'm not going to tolerate that forever.