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The New York Times on Hypocrisy of US IP Policies
jwinterboy writes "
The New York Times has an article (free blah di blah) criticizing the intellectual property framework that the U.S. places on developing countries, given that it was a large pirate of intellectual property during it's own industrialization.
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Indeed. British authors used to get very upset over the way their books were pirated in the US, and the practice didn't really stop until the US publishing industry was sufficiently large and international to want protection of their own. But then developing nations, like entrepreneurs, always need a bit of help up the ladder. Who was it said "I never ask a man how he made his first million dollars?"
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
As much as I dispise american (and western) IP laws and attitude. How can you hold people accountable for something someoneelse did 200 years ago, and how can it possibly be hypocrisy?
When IP law was first passed, the spirit was basically "Let the guy why invented something cool have a monopoly for a while. After a decade or so, give other people a chance." The problem is now copywrite is valid for such an insane length of time that there's little competition. End result: citizen loses (I hate the word 'consumer'). When did companies earn the priviledge to own copywrite?
but ...
My dad used to drive drunk occasionally when he was young. He's in AA now and thinks that drunk drivers should lose their licenses and go to jail.
Hypocrisy? Perhaps. But maybe he just wised up in his old age.
Just like how the US clearcut vast forests for the lumber and turned millions of square miles of diverse swampland into flat farmland, but we're now trying to stop Brazil from doing the same for their individual economic gains.
This is probably another very uneducated opinion, but IMHO the patent system is traditional On/Off system. When on, it should enforce equal rights and limitations to everyone - otherwise people will just find ways to exploit it. When off, it should be off for everyone.
It is not just IP that the US is trying to clamp down on, the whole U. S. policy towards emerging countries is hypocritical: but there has always been a good historical president for it:
/. know so well: silicon is litteraly dirt cheep, ic chips made from silicon are perhaps the most expensive substance by weight.
Just to take one example: the U. S. is pushing for all sorts of free trade agreements. Why? Well, for the first hundred years of our existence, the main form of revenue for our government had been tariffs (taxes on imports---taxes on exports are actually prohibited by the constitution.) At the time of the Revolutionary War, the main U.S. exports were cotton, tobacco, from the South and lumber from New England. You may notice that these are either raw materials or agricultural goods. But the money is in the value added, as readers of
It is no secret that the U.S. used protective tariffs to protect early manufacturer's (who otherwise could not compete with England). It is also no secret that the U. S. really did not like it when others tried to do the same. Now we are doing it with GATT. Throughout the last century we were not so sublte: Marines were sent throughout this hemesphere to make sure that bananas were grown and local governments were not too concerned about the welafare of the common man at the exoence of U. S. buisness interests.
The tragic thing is, just as with development of manufacture, this colonial IP policiy hurts both the developin countries and the people in developed nations. They can't form a manufacturing base, we can't get real, honest, labor unions. And of course, by keeping so many people in the unmechanized fields and unsecured mineshafts, we are really missing out on the increadible behefits that a well educated _global_ populace could bring.
The article is about a report which criticizes the intellectual property framework which the U.S. places on developing countries. The article itself is not criticizing the framework.
The NY Times can be a bit biased at times, but let's at least give them a little credit...
Interesting use of the AIDS drug issue to highlight the possible negative effects of strong IP. The author got one thing on AIDS in Africa wrong when he said: an estimated 30 million people have H.I.V. in Africa. That is just plain wrong and is an indication of the ignorance of the problem. Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, South Africa and Malawi together probably has that amount on their own! And on top of that people are starving right now, so AIDS-deaths are only really starting to impact right now. These people do not have the money to pay IP cost on top of the manufacturing cost of a drug - and usually IP is 95% of that. This huge tragedy prompted the scrapping of IP on those products.
Now we ask ourselves - WHY does it take something of this scale for people to let go of IP? and then only after lots of lobbying, pressure and pleading. I mean W.T.F.!!!
on that topic, of hypocrisy wrt ones past, it brings up another point... more recent world events...
Funny, and they are also (because they were victors (those who control the present control the past)) describe their Revolution is a just and honourable war.
The US Revolution was really a terrorist effort. Disproportional warfare was fought by the Americans, the British, and other power powers of the time had strict rules of engagement. Certain things were "allowed" and "unallowed" during warfare. The Americans, outmatched by the British Forces employed distinctly divergent tactics (raids, ambushes etc) that were -- at the time -- considered barbaric, disgraceful and un-honourable.... Terrorism.
Today, the US, faced with a rebellion; fought against them by a weaker force -- required to employ techniques that change the rules of engagement -- the Americans are now condemning them as barbaric, disgraceful: terrorists.
Am i trying to justify recent acts of violence? No. I just find it INCREDIBLY amazing that a country, that has, to be exceeded by no other -- Chosen to live by the sword -- are so self-righteous and smug wrt the barbarians at the gate. My American neighbours: Witness the fruits of Neo-Imperialism. BTW, anyone who harms another is barbarian - you cannot except yourself from the label just because you tell yourselves so on CNN.
What else do you expect the US to do today wrt IP? We have not progressed beyond State-Politics to the point where international or non-national policies are employed. Presently, the Americans enjoy a great deal of influence in a world's dynamics that they have spent a great deal influencing. "They've made the rules", within the framework of national power (recent history)... America, the present world power is the only one (short of revolution and uprising or a challenge of that power, often bloody - but not absolutely mandatory. The Americans have the opportunity to ADJUST THE SYSTEM OF POWER. To say finally, the present system is broken (look at the war, famine, etc etc) and we will be a part of devising a NEW system.... they shun most all international effort that doesn't serve them explicitly. So, am i surprised that the NYT sees Yankee IP law as hypocrisy? not at all, its more of the same, and not at all unique.
- Snow White and the Seven Dwarves - stolen
- Pinnochio - stolen
- Cinderella - stolen
- Mary Poppins -stolen
- 20,000 Leagues under the sea - stolen
- Beauty and the Beast - stolen
- Robinhood - stolen
- The Jungle Book - stolen
- Tarzan -I believe they actually pay royalties to the Burroughs estate -- and hate having to do it
- The Little Mermaid - stolen
- Mary Poppins - stolen
- Peter Pan - stolen
The list goes on and on. In fact, it appears that the whole success of the second phase of the Disney corp (The first wave of animated features) rides firmly on the back of the public domain. When they start producing their own stories in the 70's they fail miserably ("Escape from Witch Mountain", "The World's Greatest Athelete", ad nauseum).It's not so much the re-using the public domain for source material that I have a problem with, it's the bald-faced refusal to let "their" "intellectual property" loose when it's legitimately part of the common public culture. For damn sure now, every westerner knows who Mickey Mouse is, that's why he's worth so much. But he wouldn't be worth so much if everyone didn't know him. That is exactly the same reason why Disney found value in the commons when it was establishing itself as a company. The same reason their first feature was "Snow White".
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
What would the world be like if there was no IP to speak of?
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We can take an example from England early in the industrial revolution, where machinery was sealed in iron boxes, or even further back in time when Kings would intentional cripple their blacksmiths so their sword making technology couldn't escape.
Everything would be kept as trade secrets, under non-disclosure agreements.
Anyone remember the wheel, the steam engine, + others.
The steam engine was patented, as was pretty much all technology developed after 1700.
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bl
http://www.gsn.uk.com/watt.html
The fact is that the patent system has been around since the early industrial revolution, and a lot of historians cite the development of the patent system as the root cause of the rapid development of technology in the industrial world over the past 300 years. Anyone proposing that patents be abandonded really needs to consider the early history of the patent system, and what went on before patents were introduced.
The Slashdot line: We want to protect starving artists who are being exploited by the RIAA.
Reality: Almost everyone on Slashdot pushing this has vague notions of "unlimited free music" available, without them having to put any resources into production of future music. As for people that claim (and frequently have rationalized their behavior to the point of believing it) that their goals really *are* to defend the artist rather than get free music...I ask, how many of you were crusading against the recording industry's exploitation of the artist *before Napster was around*?
The Slashdot line: Windows is highly insecure. Anyone using it is asking to get broken in to. Linux/Unix is much better.
Reality: Windows and other Microsoft products have had security holes, the same as Unix/Linux has. For every egregious MS bug (active content), there's an equally egregious Unix/Linux bug (massive numbers of buffer overflows in ssh, which is frequently deployed at secure sites and is relied upon to be solid). For every MS program with a miserable security history that runs with administrative permissions (IIS), there's a Unix program that does the same (sendmail).
Slashdot line: H1Bs exploit foreign workers by bringing them to come to the United States and then work at lower wages than other US workers. H1Bs produce workers that produce code of abysmal quality. H1Bs should be eliminated to protect the workers that are being exploited. The US economy would be better (by employing more US workers) if we got rid of the H1Bs.
Reality: H1Bs let people get into the country. Workers coming to the US are quite happy to work at lower wages for a period of time if it means they get their foot in the door and can get permanent residency. People aren't being forced to take H1Bs -- they want them! They work at lower wages than US workers because US tech wages are astronomical compared to the amount of effort required to gain the skillset necessary to do the job. Many H1B workers are *very* skilled, more so than their US counterparts. If a company is going to go all the way over to another country *and* sponsor a worker, it is damn well going to do an even more stringent examination of the worker's competence than it would a domestic worker. Eliminating H1Bs wouldn't make any H1B-users happy at all -- they *choose* to come to the United States and work at 90% the normal US wage because it beats the snot out of working at 10% the normal US wage in a foreign country. As for the US economy being better by helping domestic workers...that's simply not true. What US workers want is guaranteed jobs (or at least jobs with a heavy edge given them in hiring). Costs of paying US workers more is then passed down to the consumer. So people in favor of labor protectionism are asking the entire United States to subsidize their highly-paid lifestyle when there's a more efficient alternative. Plus, it's easy to move software development to another country -- everyone speaks C++, work is fairly independent, and collaboration (and tools for collaboration) are pretty good and easy. If the US does labor protection, in the long term, companies will either move to other countries or go out of business, beaten by companies in countries with cheaper workers. That's *bad* for the economy.
Slashdot line: Sweatshops are evil. They exploit the foreign worker. They should be eliminated.
Reality: This is mostly AFL/CIO-initiated propoganda. Sweatshops are hiring foreign workers at low prices because that's the only way they can be competitive. If you want to pay $50 more for your hard drive, go for it...but competition on price is what has driven down wages. Eliminating sweatshops, as some have proposed, wouldn't do anything to help the foreign worker -- they're willing to work at inhumanly low rates because that's the only way they can get enough for food. Wipe the sweatshops out, and they simply starve. The only people to benefit are US unskilled labor, which gets a short term boost in hiring. This is much the same as the H1B item mentioned above.
Slashdot line: Drug legalization is good because I'm concerned about the human rights of the nonviolent offenders that are put in jail. The Constitution doesn't give the federal government the right to ban drugs.
Reality: Most people taking this view are interested in smoking up, not primarily concerned about potential constitutional violations. Why? I don't see complaints of constitutional violations (libertarian types aside), despite the fact that most of the Bill of Rights is pretty much ignored by the federal government (I remember doing a breakdown at one point of how many are actually strictly followed...something like two of the amendments.)
May we never see th