Our rules have been updated and given
their own forum. Go and look at them! They are nice, and there may be new ones that you didn't know about! Hooray for rules! Hooray for The System! Hooray for Conforming!
Our new Indie Games subforum is now open for business in G&T. Go and check it out, you might land a code for a free game. If you're developing an indie game and want to post about it,
follow these directions. If you don't, he'll break your legs! Hahaha! Seriously though.
Where the intangible meets the insubstantial: IP, international law and enforcement
Posts
You said that need creates entitlement to the property of others. I want to know how far you will go with that.
"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'm pretty sure its a violation of international law, to the extent it exists in this area, to recede engineer drugs, and if these countries want to permit such actions, I see no reason that we should enable this. In my ideal world, we would have a very strong multinational IP enforcement organization that would have the power to unilaterally root out these abuses, but that is obviously not going to happen.
"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
If Chinese audiences sort around a digital copy of Nixon so they don't need to order or rent a DVD to watch it, it's a travesty and Oliver Stone is at their mercy. But if American audiences sort around copies of Red Cliff so they don't need to buy them, it's just...fine, and nothing bad is happening to John Woo?
Okay, it's probably a case of neglect and disinterest so much as outright racism. "That's China's problem," etc.
At the risk of mimicry--how far would you go with that? In your ideal word, I mean, in the face of refusal to comply from a populous country with some or more economic clout?
Loss of favorable nation status? Economic sanctions? A naval blockade? Invasion and occupation?
Citation needed.
Unless you have information i don't, 'discounts' are never offered by drug manufacturers, even when selling to developing nations. Gilead Science (manufacturer of Atripla), for example, reviews what the 'market' will bear in a target country (what they could reasonably hope to squeeze out of the local government, because they couldn't hope to sell the drugs in a traditional off-the-shelf fashion) and then goes to the American government and haggles for subsidy to cover the standard cost for the drug (they sell it for about $24,000.00 per yearly dose on the American market), pocket the subsidy and then go to arrange some sort of credit agreement with either a state actor or an NGO.
I mean, if you want to talk about how it's unfair for a entertainer to have their content stolen, depriving them of a living, or even how it's unfair to have luxury designer goods stolen, that's one thing. Nobody is going to die if they don't get to watch a bootlegged copy of Battleship or a knock-off Gucci watch. But a lot of people will most certainly die if they don't receive a daily tablet that does the same thing Atripla does, and those people have no money to pay you with.
then the gains from compliance are also small, since (as you have defined) the area is a small trade partner for the first world anyway
so if the costs are still non-negligible, then the temptation to ignore the embargo is very large.
I don't know how to tell you this, but 'international law' is almost never respected in any arena, especially by America. Brazil breaks patents law, America violates foreign sovereignty & the Geneva convention. Two way street (with America getting the more favorable side of that street).
And of course that 'ideal' police force is not something that will ever happen, because the whole idea of a police force is that it's a third party with overwhelming force at it's disposal and (ideally) no interests outside of enforcing the law. You'd need to do something like hand over America's military command & assets to a multinational body and say, "Police the world. And that includes us,"
Moreover, why fix what isn't even broken? The trade agreement mechanism we have are working as intended, and companies are making money hand over fist - especially American companies - despite however lax you think IP enforcement is. What if you went to 'fix' the non-problem and caused more harm than good? What's the supposed benefit to your 'ideal system'?
What if you want to maintain a virgin marketplace for your product in the future, when it has developed? Even if I can't make money selling Gucci handbags in Chad now, it doesn't mean that I want my logo so diluted that when they do become affluent, they aren't willing to pay my prices because they are used to buying knock offs for $10. Maybe hand bags aren't the best example, but what about drugs or DVDs?
"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'm honestly not sure. If there was an international IP police force, I suppose arrests would be appropriate. Never invasion and occupation though.
Sure, I would. That doesn't mean the police would be wrong to arrest me.
The benefit of my ideal would be wider markets (both in the future and now) for legitimate products. Even if 1/10th of all spending on pirated goods was exchanged for legitimate goods, that would be a huge boon to IP creators. It would also incentivize the creation of products for regions like China and India, which are often ignored now despite their size because of piracy.
"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
If it is impossible for a company to establish a "virgin" marketplace, change the strategy. Adapt.
So we're clear on the language: the benefit would be that companies already making a lot of money would be able to make even more money. That's what you mean by 'wider market', correct?
And I'm not sure what you mean by, "creation of products for regions like China and India," ? Again, do you not understand how ridiculously racist you sound when you say things like that?
affluency entails a domestic interest in intellectual property, no?
A person who has lived life close to the bone for a while will laugh at a $200 handbag. After all, their cousin down the street is the one who stitches them up and the raw materials aren't worth spit. Certainly, one of the fringe benefits of the Great Depression was a quality consciousness in the American buying public that has since dissipated. Rather than worrying about how to get the third world "affluence stupid" we could train ourselves to be more conscious of quality rather than branding.
"There is not a man of us who does not at times need a helping hand to be stretched out to him, and then shame upon him who will not stretch out the helping hand to his brother."
I would really like to pursue this line of thought. I already mentioned Interpol (and Lupin III) at the beginning of this thread--what happens when a local government flat-out informs Interpol that they are not going to leave with a reasonable, clean-cut, telegenic young person who they've arrested for hosting a website that distributes foreign movies to his or her countrymen (well, let's be real--him, they'd probably think more than twice before arresting a woman in a foreign country for reasons to follow).
What happens if its Johnny from down the street, who graduated from MIT on a scholarship, promotes open-source, Linux, and other non-negative nerdy crap, who takes care of his single mother. What happens when Interpol agents arrest him at the behest of the Beijing Film Group for helping to distribute a Chinese blockbuster to, say, three million viewers who didn't pay for it. And what happens when the mayor of Norfolk, Virginia, very plainly informs the 3 or 5 or 10 Interpol agents, in the middle of an election season, that Johnny doesn't owe the Chinese shit, and certainly isn't going to jail for doing something on a computer to a movie the honorable mayor never heard of--and uses physical means to plainly stop those Interpol operatives from going anywhere with Johnny--not legal, obviously, easily within the powers of a high city official.
How does that end? Is there any answer besides, "With the Interpol agents watching 100 local police form a human barrier around Johnny, and his computer, until they give up."? If there is, I absolutely would like to hear it.
"That won't always happen," isn't an answer. I expect it'll only take one time, that doesn't even end in violence, to make a complete mockery out of the enforcement capabilities of the police organization in question.
And continue to hire IP creators and people in marketing and distribution, etc. IP creation is so critical to the US that I think it is totally reasonable to take efforts to protect the field.
Right now, major markets like China are often ignored by major companies (or don't get products released until years after their introduction in other countries) because you can't sell in those markets with pirates as competition. Enhance IP enforcement, and you turn those into viable markets.
Small comfort to the multinationals whose brands have been devalued by piracy in the markets.
You never want to see any police force turn violent, but even domestic police have to do so with alarming regularity. There have been sitting mayors in the US who were arrested while in office, I don't see why your hypothetical mayor may not be treated the same way. To be honest, if we had this sort of multinational agency and everyone is signed onto it, I don't really see where you would need to draw the line. Anyone who doesn't want to be arrested just needs to not pirate. Anyone who doesn't want to be subject to force just needs to cooperate when arrested.
"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
In my ideal world dogs shit ice cream. Not going to happen anytime soon.
I still don't know if I'd want to eat that...
But a world where governments say "Yes, we will strictly enforce the international treaties to which we agreed" is a lot more doable than Dairy Queen Poodles.
I'm sure their giant piles of money will help them... oh wait, they don't have feelings because they're not actual people. And the executives don't care because they're making money hand over fist, and the shareholders would lose far more because of the exorbitant cost of enforcement
Why does everything need to be about class warfare? I don't think there is a class undertone here at all. IP infringement hurts the first world IP creation industries which are key components of all of their economies and employ many many employees.
"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, I am saying that being poor doesn't exempt you from the law. That is quite different, I think. Need does not create entitlement, no matter how sympathetic.
"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
Class warfare is intertwined into human society and big business. You can't avoid it. IP's are a field that is deeply entrenched into subject on a worldwide scale.
Your egotisical views about my family and the entitlements that we have gotten are nothing less that downright disgusting. You are not interested in debating but rather in taking pot shots at something which your mind cannot grasp. That is no fault of my own and your condition is not my concern.
However, I will entertain your egotistical fantasy on "need creates entitlement".
It certain does when American companies, such as the Pharmaceutical companies, go into the third world, corrupt the systems in place, and then claim that their products are being infringed upon and huff and puff about it.
Frankly if this isn't Neo-Colonialism then I do not know what is.
When it comes to stealing to intellectual, medical, or any other such knowledge which is clearly stolen from natives by American or even "Western" companies then there is a need to steal or infringe on the IP of companies to take back what was theirs regardless of whether or not they put, time, money, or effort into it.
For your analogy if I have a car and you come and steal it, take it to your country, rebrand and register it for your IP and create improvements or whatever on it I still own the car regardless of whatever you've done to it. If I decide that your country doesn't support the Global south from succeeding on their own terms then I have full rights to remake that car and sell it as my own cheaper alternative.
You have a problem with that? Then make your Pharmaceutical companies stick to their own borders and don't try to colonize the world once again. As a citizen of a nation which came under Western colonization once, any actions taken to stick these colonizers get my support, regardless of what it is be it movies, medicinal drugs or handbags.
If you fail to see this as a class struggle I suggest you redefine whatever your believe in and take a good, hard, look at yourself and were you stand.
Well, that solves the problem. Until the mayor of Cairo politely informs Interpol, acting on behalf of MGM, politely tells them to eat a dick when they try and arrest some pirate graduate student in an Egyptian university.
That doesn't seem like an actual answer, even for this fictional, already unfeasible scenario: Those mayors--and government officials--were arrested on orders of an American government, federal or otherwise. Because if they weren't--and they were arrest for a crime comparable to foreign IP violation--please tell me. Countries arrest their own nationals. This is not new. They have since the rise of the nation-state. Have any of those sitting American mayors been arrested at the behest of entities, public or private, of another nation for any reason? And painlessly handed over? Because that example seems to offer a big reason why my hypothetical mayor, in your hypothetical world, wouldn't be treated that way. Or for that matter, why plenty of domestic violators of foreign IP laws would be ignored by domestic law agencies whose responsibility is to their own countrymen, not to some foreign corporation that may or may not be covered an economic treaty.
Sometimes criminals are extradited. And sometimes they're not. We have a great many cases where multiple governments have plainly refused to release their nationals--or for that matter, foreign nationals--to a foreign government. In the face of much stronger arguments--national security, crimes against humanity and treason--than "violation of IP law." I can write a giant check to New Tang Dynasty Television, a real life propaganda arm/TV channel of the Falun Gong, against the wishes of the sovereign government of 1.3 billion people, and show it to American government officials, and they won't give a shit. Who in their right mind would care about some other country's IP laws? Is such a hypothetical world entirely dependent on a coexisting hypothetical world where Interpol is full of supermen, or domestic police don't act like any counterparts in reality?
The state grants the exclusive control of private property for a combination of reasons such as privacy, prevention of accumulated wear and tear from a bunch of people walking through your house, and easier enforcement of laws such as those against property damage and theft. The exclusive control is a mechanism, a means to an end rather than an end to itself. If a bunch of invisible ghosts flew around your house but couldn't see you or any private information would you really have been wronged?
Privacy doesn't apply to content because you're intending to distribute it anyway, content (as opposed to the medium it's stored on) doesn't suffer wear and tear or damage, and as I mentioned earlier duplicating content doesn't deprive you of your use of it.
There's no natural right to control a given market; if you have an apple farm and then I start up another one I'm decreasing your potential market in just the same way as if I started making and selling copies of a book you'd written, yet the former is clearly legal and ethical. The reason the latter is illegal is to reward and incentivize creation of content, and is a matter to be enforced internally or not as each government decides.
The best long-term solution to unlicensed foreign content is simply reducing global inequality. As poorer nations (hopefully) become wealthier their citizens will gain the ability to afford and produce content on their own, at which point they'll develop copyright laws of their own. They'll want other countries to respect their copyright, so they'll make treaties like the wealthier countries have done and the "problem" you seem to care so much about will fade away.
well, humanity is condemned to suffer. Here's your share.
Of course, it would be even better to guard the sanctity of IP and make a profit at the same time.
It's what he's always about when it wouldn't negatively affect him.
America is killing thousands/millions for the benefit of rich Americans? Hey the American government is obliged to kill anyone it takes if it results in even the slightest improvement for America.
A third world country manufactures drugs to treat AIDS because their people are dying from it in droves and drug companies refuse to sell at a price they can afford? Send in the drones.
If you have to make serious changes to account for rampant illegal activity, then the regulatory authorities have failed. Full stop. The whole point of having them is supposed to be to create a baseline assumption of lawful activity.
I am not sure that I follow what you are saying here. If I grow corn, then you see my corn, think its a good idea and start growing it, there is no problem, because you don't own the rights to all corn. Now, if I go home and put the work into learning to make a medicine by isolating a special property of corn, synthesizing that molecule, running tests on it, etc., I own the work I did and the process, even though I don't own corn. If I go and start selli gbthe drug to you, how have you been stolen from? You still have your corn. You can still eat it. If you had a folk remedy based on the corn, you are still free to use that. But if you want my synthetic corn wonder drug, you need to pay me. What is the problem here?
Also, I still don't understand what any of this has to do with need creating entitlement.
"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 don't understand why you are positing a hypothetical multinational police force, which every country signs into, and then assuming that these countries will reject its legitimacy. The whole point of the hypothetical is that everyone has agreed to it.
There would be no obligation not to kill the other man. What would that even mean? The whole reason prohibitions on killing are so universal is that we don't want to spend our whole lives watching our backs. Doesn't apply here, because once you kill the other man, there is no one left to follow the precedent.
I would object equally to the ghosts trespassing as I would people.
I disagree that property rights are just about privacy. I think they are about making sure that the work you do is not taken from you, since choosing work instead of leisure is a net negative in most cases. If I put the work into building a house and you take its use from me, then you have stolen the time I put into building it. Without robust property rights, I am stuck in a self help situation, sitting in my booby trapped house with a shotgun to keep would be interlopers from taking what is mine, which is terribly inefficient.
I think IP is identical. You are free to compete with me based on your own labor, and that is fine, but you can't just take my labor and compete against me. It wrongs me in that you take my time/invalidate my choice of how to use my time/take my freedom to choose work or play (I.e., enslave me). It's the difference between growing your own apes to sell vs sneaking onto my orchard, stealing some apples that I was not going to sell for whatever reason, and then selling them for less than I do, because you have no costs to account for.
"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 can only take your refusal to time down the hyperbole as a refusal to engage in good faith, but I will still respond.
I believe every nation is obliged to advance the interests of its citizens and its citizens alone. For a powerful nation, that may well mean imposing sanctions and requirements on other, weaker nations. For a weaker nation, it may well mean getting away with what they can, but once their stronger neighbor takes notice? They can only push to the extent they have the power to do so. I don't think any government has any obligation to (or even the right to) put other nations' citizens ahead of its own, but that doesn't mean that a weaker nation has a right to force those interests on a stronger country. Sovreign rights end at the point where a stronger sovereign's exist.
"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
That's a risk that a company accepts when they choose that particular strategy. There are benefits and costs to both methods of introduction.
I already pointed out that - in many cases - drug companies wait to enter particular markets (US, Japan, EU are the big ones) until after the product is established in one market. Translating from T4 to Population is an expensive, lengthy, and difficult step, and while some of the steps overlap between the FDA, EMEA, and Japanese Ministry of Health, you basically need to do the same thing three times over if you are introducing a new drug.
If your drug is already established in one population though, it becomes MUCH easier to pass the EMEA, Japanese MoH, or any of a hundred other countries versions of the FDA's approval process. And yes, even India and China have regulatory processes that need to be passed.
When a company chooses to save money by delaying entry into one market, they are making an informed choice to do so. The amount of money it would cost them to enter that market at each point, vs. projected profits, vs. potential losses due to timing, are all something their business should (and generally do) consider. Potential losses due to IP theft are one line on a balance sheet - somewhere around 'transportation damages', 'manufacturing QA' and 'shrinkage'.
Companies are always happy to privatize profits but socialize risks. They never, ever, want to accept the consequences of their actions, even when those consequences are known ahead of time. This is no different - if a company makes a choice to act in a way that knowingly encourages / promotes IP theft, I'm not going to cry about the profits they supposedly lose.
If their projections are wrong? Well, that's on them. Price of doing business. Explain it to your board and shareholders.
I agree on the economics of the choice, but isn't it a serious regulatory failure that we should even need to account for illegal activity like this in our calculus?
"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 is a choice that has been made because it is one of the best options. You can't have your cake and eat it too. America cannot demand 100% effective international enforcement and also not be beholden to any enforcement.
So, we deal with some amount of piracy.
The only reason you see it as a serious failure is this odd insistence that America needing to choose between two options is anathema.
http://troublethinking.wordpress.com (Updated Wed) http://twitter.com/#!/Durandal4532
If the government does not have to protect the interest of its citizens, then that is the corporation's problems. If asking for universal healthcare is communism, entitlement and God knows what else then using public funds and organisms to serve corporations (up to military intervention!) should be much worse.
I mean, if we talk military intervention, how is it right for a government to risk its citizen's lifes in order to allow other citizens to make some more profit?
No.
It's another consideration businesses need to make, that's all. Every single business has to consider for activity like this in one way or another.
Retail stores need to consider into their bottom line a given amount of shrinkage in their inventory. That loss ranges from damaged goods to inventory mistakes to (usually primarily) shoplifting / theft.
Farmers usually have to pay for frost / hail insurance, or risk losing an entire crop if bad weather strikes.
Manufacturing has to account for a given number of defects in the manufacturing process. It also needs to consider in it's bottom line a given amount of settlement / legal fees / damages for injuries / deaths that result from those defects.
Hell, every business needs to consider a given amount of their employee's time will be wasted on activity that doesn't benefit the business.
This is literally the price of doing business. We don't live in a perfect world, and not every consideration can or should be regulated and fully preventable. Normally, the economics of preventing unwanted activity results in a certain amount of mitigation, and some acceptance.
In your proposal, instead of taking actions to mitigate unacceptable losses due to IP and accepting a given amount of IP theft is inevitable, businesses should socialize the costs of preventing IP theft - through government regulation, diplomatic pressures, and military action. Instead of privatizing the costs (instituting DRM, adding value to their 'legitimate' products, selling at a price point that allows them to utilize economies of scale to make IP theft uneconomical) they want someone else to deal with it for them.
I'll agree that a certain amount of IP theft should be mitigated socially as there are definitely societal benefits to having some IP rights that are enforced through law / regulation. Even some corporate profits are beneficial to society - but that doesn't extend to infinity. At the point, the returns on those costs are negligible to society as a whole or even become detrimental / negative. At that point, the onus should be on business to either assume those costs themselves or find a way to cope / mitigate them. Corporate profits are only - to a certain point - beneficial to society. If that means not entering certain markets, so be it.
So--and I'm not trying to put to put words in your mouth--but the only way this would be remotely feasible is:
1) All countries agreed that foreign IP law would be worth protecting, when they can't agree on things like nuclear nonproliferation or climate change or the safety of the human species.
2) All countries start respecting the laws of other, distant countries--for that matter, occasional vague, frequently changing laws--when they actually prefer to flagrant violate other country's laws for social and political reasons, as well as those of convenience, and will sometimes actually go out of their way to do so.
Neither of which seems even remotely possible. The ideal world isn't dependent on just one "miracle", it's dependent on two (or more) unrelated miracles.