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Where the intangible meets the insubstantial: IP, international law and enforcement
Posts
Maybe we could see this as a contract. If the US/West wants this, perhaps they pay for the privilege in real terms, not threats
I'm not sure that enforcement needs to on going or at first world standards here, but let's assume that nothing I have said in this thread is at all workable. What is the answer? Surely it can't be that the third world is an untouchable den of IP iniquity which everyone is the world is powerless to change.
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
It's odd though because in the case of IP thief #1, it's state owned companies doing the rip offs, and often government employed hackers doing the stealing.
You have to accept there might not be a better solution than what we have now.
But these weaker countries are already benefiting from the brave new world in which no one will take them over as a colony or conquer them otherwise. They're already forging an evolving nation in a nerf ball world, so I don't lament their loss of the more cavalier and aggressive position that their predecessors had towards IP.
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
IP is one of (if not THE) main exports of the US currently.
Since the stated purpose of IP law is to spur innovation, doesn't this fact suggest that current IP law is adequate? Is there evidence that we would be seeing significantly more innovation from US companies if IP law were somehow enforced in third-world countries?
practical enforcement of IP rights, even in the first world, requires consumers wealthy enough to demand a non-fly-by-night brand, which is what gives investigators any physical capability at all to even track down who is churning out the Guci handbags and Sany headphones. So, yes, your only answer is to sit and wait for development to happen.
this is quite aside from the issue of state-endorsed renunciation of specific IP claims, which is what I believe initially sparked this line of discussion. I should point out that specific waivers of certain medical patents are part of international treaties here.
While this is getting away from the initial concept of third world nations, there's a growing issue with smaller content creators not being able to sustain themselves. There are fewer working musicians now, for example. This is hurting innovation.
That's fine. We just disagree here. I have a hard enough time with what I see as the injustice that a beleaguered nation like Israel can't just oust its attackers from its borders as all modern nations did when they were being formed, but that is a whole other topic. In the absence of an overarching world government with a monopoly on the legal use of force among sovereigns, I have a hard time understanding why might should not make right as between sovereigns.
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
and I don't even mean the world wars, I mean the wars of religion, which only stopped because the protestants and counter-reformation both were too exhausted to continue
Doesn't it depend on the infringement? As you correctly note, this started with the entrenched illegal generic drug trades in many countries. Putting aside the specific exceptions, it strikes me that these types of IP violations ought to be quite easy to deal with, as they occur in discrete, permanent factories. Sure, we can't stamp out all pirated dvd sales in the US or China, but I think we could probably shut down all the factories pretty easily.
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
I still do not understand at all what is wrong or strange here.
I think the only reason you find this strange is because you've decided that there is a list of countries ranking them in order from Strongest to Weakest in a very particular order across all categories.
If your argument is "This is perverse! The strongest can't convince the weakest to do anything!" then the actual thing to conclude is that your ranking system is either off or irrelevant in this case.
Edit: Why would we shut down pirated DVD factories in China?
http://troublethinking.wordpress.com (Updated Wed) http://twitter.com/#!/Durandal4532
but, you see, I don't prize consistency so much that I see any problem with saying that ethnic cleansing is unacceptable!
It kinda does disadvantage newer forming countries vs already established ones, but I'm okay with that because of how terrible things were before
illegality is, of course, something to be decided by treaty and government. It might not be your government, at that. See: nationalization and taxation, more generally. If your government can seize stuff from you, why can't it seize stuff from foreigners within the scope of its powers?
as for factories - no, not really. Here is a factory:
there's nothing here that is particularly permanent. And note that we haven't even gotten into forms of IP theft like "making more copies of a legally-subcontracted order than required, then quietly selling those extra copies without paying the IP fees for those".
You don't see the perversion in having a strong military nation which is forced to endure rockets being fired over its borders for all time because it isn't allowed to remove them? This is honestly a concept that I can't quite grasp. Governments are able to subvert the usual "might makes right" course among their citizens because the government itself is so much stronger than any individual. That is not the case in the international community.
Lets say that President Obama was to read this thread and say "that Spacekungfuman is making a lot of sense. I'm branding all the knock off pill factories in Myanmar as terrorist cells and sending drones in to blow them up tomorrow." Would the US face effective sanctions? Would it face any sanctions at all? Can the UN even really sanction the US?
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
Why should it be irrelevant though?
Why wouldn't we shut down the Chinese DVD pirates if we could? They are stealing from US film studios.
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
No sanctions would be enforced upon the US. If they were, repeat the Chinese DVD pirates process ad infinitum.
My whole position is that the "scope of its powers" seems like it should end when it runs into a more powerful opponent, like the US.
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
No, instead there would be hell to pay for America's reputation, treaties would potentially be broken, allies would start to back away from specific actions they disagree with or end the alliance completely. God help America if any third world country tried fighting back. Drones are easier to slip in and out of countries easily, not battalions of soldiers and military ships/aircraft.
It'd strain America's relationship with China. China is extremely protective of their citizens.
no, I don't see it as perverse
the thing about a standard of collateral damage in the form of "let's purge them all" is that it is explicitly escalatory. this is exactly how wars are 'won' with half your population dead.
and you cannot pledge to only do it to countries weaker than you, because (1) that is never clear (2) countries get weaker and stronger all the time, and a strong country now seeing itself becoming weaker would take the opportunity to murder the hell out of anybody within striking distance. given modern technology, that's easily a whole continent.
as for "can the UN really dent a superpower", the last time a superpower flounced out of a security council vote, the entire united nations endorsed military action on its favoured proxy. this is admittedly an extreme case, but you were positing an extreme scenario.
you are still getting it wrong; the US created these institutions to further its own geopolitical objectives, like, say, not descending into another collapse of global trade
Should it be in the US interest, we can choose to redefine what Chinese pirate DVD factories are doing.
I think, for instance, it is likely that treating it as theft would likely damage a relationship worth more than the pittance of lost DVD sales for some businesses in the US. Why treat it as theft, then?
http://troublethinking.wordpress.com (Updated Wed) http://twitter.com/#!/Durandal4532
it is merely that a world without an entrenched trade system underpinned with Most Favoured Nation, is not a world the US fancies either
If it's just like, in principle, and matters to you... why does it matter in general?
http://troublethinking.wordpress.com (Updated Wed) http://twitter.com/#!/Durandal4532
The US has effectively been able to executive military actions against any country in the world it has chosen to during the entire existence of the UN, has it not? There are super powers and there is THE superpower. Everyone likes to joke about how America's navy needs to be ready to take down the rest of the world's navies combined, and while it is a little over the top, the fact remains that America's navy is stronger than the rest of the world's navies combined. Maybe we couldn't beat China in a real war (and either way, the world is over at that point, so I'm not sure what victory means) but no one in this thread is proposing bating that particular tiger, despite them being among the worst IP infringers in the world. Maybe I'm overtly patriotic or just naive, but it seems to me that the US is in a class all its own is this discussion.
I understand that, BUT it seems to me that either they got it wrong to some degree, or they have accepted what I would regard as an unacceptable level of bad behavior from other countries. Remember, we are talking about the poorest, weakest nations in the world here, and yet the consensus in this thread seems to be that stopping them from stealing our valuable IP is impossible. Something seems wrong with this picture, no?
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson
The thing is, IP isn't real. It only exists as part of our laws, and there are no laws when it comes to international relations. Another country can't steal our IP, the very idea is nonsense. The most they can do is break a treaty with us. And if there's not even a treaty, then that's that.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we got booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
Pfft.
When has killing citizens in sovereign countries ever bitten us in the ass?
I mean, he's not talking about war after all. Just all of the actions that lead up to a war.
Even in purely financial terms it would probably cost more to stop infringement than would actually be made, either because the companies in question wouldn't bother selling products there, they would sell the products at prices too high for people in those countries to afford, or they would sell them at lower prices and lose money in the US/elsewhere when people engage in arbitrage.
That's not to mention the cost of lost international goodwill, creating an image of us as bullying weaker countries for profit, etc.
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.
This music is being (preemptively) removed from the public domain; it's being stolen from the people."
I don't know what the solution is really, but I'm watching it happen and it's a bit sad, really.
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?
"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing." -- Andrew Jackson