WIPO Committee Presentations Show Nuanced View of Copyright

AtomicJake writes "As the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is known for a very rigid course combating counterfeiting and piracy in general, it comes as a surprise that during a meeting of the WIPO Advisory Committee on Enforcement, several presenters have shown nuanced views on the economics of enforcing intellectual property rights. Combating clothing piracy might not be beneficial for the welfare of a developing country. Most surprising is the presentation of WIPO Chief Economist (PDF) Carsten Fink, which says that illegal copies of software may actually be beneficial even for consumers of the original goods. Also the piracy of audio-visual goods creates not only losses but also benefits for e.g. hardware manufacturers. Maybe this is because Mr. Fink wrote the presentation before joining WIPO?"

Comments

Rights-holder bears costs

[icebike]

One of the most interesting suggestions was that rights holders should expect to bear enforcement costs for violations.

At first it would seem to make the rights holder a double victim, once by the infringer, and again by the state. However, rights holders are usually the only group that clearly benefits from suppression of counterfeit goods, and government costs of tracking down every back-ally sneaker salesman could be better spent in other areas.

The suggestion was also raised to make it the mission of government to actively enforce only those infringements that have a public welfare aspect, (bogus medicines, dangerous shoddy rip offs of patented products).

However, there is this old saw thrown in:

If firms cannot prevent third parties from copying the fruits of their inventive and creative activities, they have little incentive to invest financial resources into such activities. Arguably, inventive and creative would not grind to a halt without government intervention. Artists may be motivated by prestige or inherent self-interest in pursuing their profession. Firms may have other means of profiting from new technologies, such as benefiting from a first-mover advantage. Nonetheless, governments have historically opted to supplement these “natural” incentives with exclusive rights to intellectual property.

Which of course is at best a stretch and at worst simply untrue. There is no evidence that invention did not exist prior to patents and copyrights, or would cease without it. Its clear our current system goes way beyond protecting first movers, to the clear detriment of society as a whole and an unwarranted power shift to rights holders.

All in all, a far more balanced report than you would expect from this organization.

Re:Rights-holder bears costs

[Bigjeff5]

You seem to have only read the first sentance of that paragraph, because it goes on to give additional incentives besides money, and also admit that companies can potentially profit from new technologies in ways other than the monopoly that copyright provides. Then they state that governments have chosen to suppliment the natural incentives.

It is completely accurate.

A lot of the current extreme backlash against copyright stems from a misunderstanding of what copyright is, and what it is intended to do. The goal of copyright is not to allow content producers to profit from their product - that's simply the vehicle for achieving its goal. The goal of copyright is to produce as much new creative content (art, literature, music, etc) as possible for the overall benefit of the public, and it sounds like at least one person at the WIPO understands this.

You see, copyright is really an exception to an individual's right to use of any property they own for any purpose except directly harming another individual or their property. It is an exception to your natural rights, and as such it has limitations. This doctrine basically says there are some situations where copying all or part of a work for certain purposes like analysis, review, commentary, etc, are fair and the copyright monopoly does not affect those uses. Because fair use is determined by deciding what copyright does not apply to, rather than what fair use applies to, it tends to be fuzzy and subjective.

Now, the companies who profit the most off of copyrighted works couldn't give a rat's ass about producing new content for the enhancement of society as a whole, all they care about is how much their content can be consumed. Obviously if copyrights they own go away after 20-30 years, they can't keep milking that cash cow, so they push for extensions. As soon as they get one they push for more, and more. It doesn't help that half the time congressmen don't have a clue (or sometimes even want to have a clue) about things like copyright and what it is for. So we end up with cartoons that have been copyrighted for 100 years with no end in sight, books that won't come into the public domain until they are largely irrelivant, and music that is copyrighted virtually indefinitely.

Sane copyright is a good thing, however insane copyright really just encourages piracy. Piracy has gotten so prevalent that I'm not even sure copyright is having that much of a detrimental effect on society. The funny thing is, people are generally happy to pay for this stuff if it is priced reasonably. What does it cost a record label to cut the price of a digital download in half and sell three times as many copies? If you can't do that math, you suck at business.

ACTA

[Anonymous Coward]

This explains why ACTA is not going though the WIPO and instead it's own little path.

This is right on the mark - mod it up.

[langelgjm]

This AC is absolutely right. WIPO has actually been taking a much more moderate approach to a lot of IP policy lately, with its development agenda and the increased influence of developing countries there. There has been so much relative moderation that some people feel WIPO is gridlocked

So, US, EU, Japan, et al. know that they will make no progress in pushing ACTA through WIPO (which would be the appropriate forum). As a result, they've pursued ACTA by itself, in a completely non-transparent manner.

I disagree

[Anonymous Coward]

However, rights holders are usually the only group that clearly benefits from suppression of counterfeit goods

I disagree. Look at China. Due to rampant piracy, no company can make a name for themselves (I'm talking more physical products vs. media). Anyone trying to make a high quality product is undercut by someone making a low quality knockoff (down to the same name/logo) driving the quality producer out of business. Now everything becomes a low quality product competing over price. This makes it hard to compete globally.
I realize this post will get a lot of heat for saying China has trouble exporting, but when is the last time you purchased something that had the name of a Chinese company on the box. They have the low end covered and their factories can make products for multinationals that oversee the quality, but it will be very difficult for them to sell a car in the US or to compete with a company like Caterpillar. They even have trouble selling major appliances, even though most of the name brands are made over there to begin with.

Re:I disagree

[DinDaddy]

Japan was in the same boat 50 years ago. Now look. And with the public access to information about products that the internet has brought, I would bet China could change perception about their brands in a decade easily.

Re:I disagree

[Darkness404]

Due to rampant piracy, no company can make a name for themselves (I'm talking more physical products vs. media)

Because no one has heard of Leveno? The main reason why no company can make a name for themselves in a US market is A) Their name sounds distinctly foreign (I'd rather drink an English-sounding drink than a drink from Kweichow Moutai Company) B) They are tailored to a specific market. China doesn't have the mass media that the US and Europe does, almost all the media in China is state-run or sponsored. Because of this the advertising needs to be changed, where in the US, individuality and uniqueness is appreciated, in China it is not. So a lot of ads that are successful in the US because of that (such as the Think Different Mac ads) would fail in China. C) in China -a lot- of companies either have government control or influence. Cherry Automobile (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chery_Automobile) is the largest independent Chinese auto maker and it is run by the Chinese government. Such things don't export well and D) A significant amount of Americans avoid things that are Chinese. There are a lot of Americans who think that China is going to nuke the US or other crazy theories, but nonetheless some people do believe them and so that keeps a lot of Chinese-sounding goods from American shores.

well

[nomadic]

Most legal and political discourse is more nuanced than it usually gets credit for; it's just by the time it reaches slashdot it's been distilled into a misleading, emotionally-charged headline that people can get outraged over.

Adult Industry

[NoobixCube]

I think for a real distilled view of the impact of piracy, we should ask the adult entertainment industry. They don't do concerts like musicians, or have big cinema releases like regular movies, so pretty much the only income of a porn studio comes from overpriced DVDs and licensed sex toys (as in ones made to mimic stars' body parts). My (obviously anecdotal) experience suggests that most of the pirates causing hollywood headaches are pretty avid consumers of porn, and given that they already pirate normal movies and music, I dare say they don't usually buy their porn either. If we could get some figures from the porn industry on just what impact piracy has had on them, then we could probably extrapolate that to the regular entertainment industry. Given that porn is still both plentiful and expensive, and I've actually seen the number of adult stores increase in the past few years, suggesting proffitability, I think the results of such a survey would be interesting to people on both sides of the copyright fence.