Where the intangible meets the insubstantial: IP, international law and enforcement

Heffling

spacekungfuman wrote: »

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.

Major companies outsource their production to China, so China knows how much a specific product costs to make and what needs to be done to make it. Why should China pay the exhorbitant markup that a US company would institute, when they don't have to? They are a soveriegn nation, and under no obligation to follow US copyright law, and gain no benifit from doing so.

This is exactly why China keeps the RNB so cheap compared to the dollar. It encourages US companies to invest into China, and allows China to advance technologically without having to re-invent the wheel.

All enforcing US IP law in China would do is benifit the US, so China isn't going to do it. The market/demand exists for these products in China, and the US can't be competative in supplying.

Heffling

spacekungfuman wrote: »

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?

But if I see you have the drug, and figure out how to make it on my own or reverse engineer it from your drug, I have to pay you? Why? I've now put my own time and work into it as well.

AngelHedgie

Synthesis wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

Synthesis wrote: »

The Ender wrote: »

Uh. There is an international body that enforces copyright / IP laws (among other laws): Interpol

Maybe Interpol isn't 'strong' enough in your view, whatever that means, but it certainly does exist and certainly does arrest people (i believe it was Interpol that ultimately arrested the Pirate Bay guys).

It seems to me that we are essentially in a situation where we have placed the more powerful (as measured by military power, global influence and wealth) 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. The question that I want to discuss in this thread is what, if any, enforcement efforts or self help are justified on behalf of the stronger nations in this scenario when the international community process fails them. Should they be able to pursue economic sanctions? Press for trade embargoes? Engage in targetted military action? Full scale invasion?

To keep this discussion focused, I would like to limit discussion to IP violations where the violator simply copies someone else's creation (i.e., generic drugs, knock off hand bags, boot legged movies) and not IP violations where people use someone else's work to create something new.

...This is a really racist & jingoistic statement, eh? Claiming that the brown people over there don't make any new IP, and since they have no ideas themselves, well of course they just steal ours.

African nations like Mozambique make their own drugs after analyzing proprietary drugs sold by western profiteers because they feel that they they are being price gouged / held hostage, and that the medicine required to stop the HIV epidemic should not be a protected-for-profit enterprise - that it is not 'stealing' something to see what the ingredients are and then make a similar product. I have a feeling that if, say, 15% of Colorado was infected with an incurable disease, and the IP holders of the mitigation treatment were based in New Guinea, there would be no outcry over the abuse of IP laws when American labs simply duplicate the treatment rather than having a state enter into ridiculously unfair / unreasonable financial debt to a foreign body.

it's also ridiculous to claim that America is 'at the mercy' of places like Zambia or South Africa because they are making knock-off drugs and American pharmaceutical companies aren't making the absolute maximum amount of profit that they could be.

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.

spacekungfuman wrote: »

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.

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?

I'm honestly not sure. If there was an international IP police force, I suppose arrests would be appropriate. Never invasion and occupation though.

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.

One, the US does actually go after active pirates. This is because IP is one of our major exports.

Two, the industry has moved away from going after individual end users, and is more focused on hub operators (MegaUpload, ISOHunt) as well as undercutting the piracy economy - the latter of which has more than a few tech companies rather nervous.

AngelHedgie

Synthesis wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

Synthesis wrote: »

Phyphor wrote: »

Well they wouldn't be policing America obviously. Its those thieving African nations that are the problem!

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.

spacekungfuman wrote: »

The Ender wrote: »

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.

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?

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.

ronya wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

ronya wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

ronya wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

ronya wrote: »

The countries you most need to cooperate with sanctions, have most to lose from applying the sanctions.

This is exactly what you would expect from a system designed to force everyone to keep the system generating mutual gains from trade operational.

It's as if you had a police force where, every time a crime occurred, the sheriff had to go ask for posse of unpaid volunteers to risk their lives apprehending the criminal. You would have to have a rather flexible notion of 'crime' to make this sustainable.

I may well be wrong, but how valuable of a trade partner can one of these very poor African nations be? Especially in a world where the governments don't even really control their natural resources?

nations trade heavily with their neighbours. the neighbours of poor nations are often themselves poor. Chad's biggest trade partner is Cameroon.

Lets be simplistic here for the sake if a thought experiment. Why not make demands of the whole bloc of poor countries in the region and embargo them all until the group complies? Unless the region is a relevant trade partner for the first works, this seems like a way to fix the incentives, no?

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.

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?

affluency entails a domestic interest in intellectual property, no?

Small comfort to the multinationals whose brands have been devalued by piracy in the markets.

Synthesis wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

Synthesis wrote: »

The Ender wrote: »

Uh. There is an international body that enforces copyright / IP laws (among other laws): Interpol

Maybe Interpol isn't 'strong' enough in your view, whatever that means, but it certainly does exist and certainly does arrest people (i believe it was Interpol that ultimately arrested the Pirate Bay guys).

It seems to me that we are essentially in a situation where we have placed the more powerful (as measured by military power, global influence and wealth) 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. The question that I want to discuss in this thread is what, if any, enforcement efforts or self help are justified on behalf of the stronger nations in this scenario when the international community process fails them. Should they be able to pursue economic sanctions? Press for trade embargoes? Engage in targetted military action? Full scale invasion?

To keep this discussion focused, I would like to limit discussion to IP violations where the violator simply copies someone else's creation (i.e., generic drugs, knock off hand bags, boot legged movies) and not IP violations where people use someone else's work to create something new.

...This is a really racist & jingoistic statement, eh? Claiming that the brown people over there don't make any new IP, and since they have no ideas themselves, well of course they just steal ours.

African nations like Mozambique make their own drugs after analyzing proprietary drugs sold by western profiteers because they feel that they they are being price gouged / held hostage, and that the medicine required to stop the HIV epidemic should not be a protected-for-profit enterprise - that it is not 'stealing' something to see what the ingredients are and then make a similar product. I have a feeling that if, say, 15% of Colorado was infected with an incurable disease, and the IP holders of the mitigation treatment were based in New Guinea, there would be no outcry over the abuse of IP laws when American labs simply duplicate the treatment rather than having a state enter into ridiculously unfair / unreasonable financial debt to a foreign body.

it's also ridiculous to claim that America is 'at the mercy' of places like Zambia or South Africa because they are making knock-off drugs and American pharmaceutical companies aren't making the absolute maximum amount of profit that they could be.

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.

spacekungfuman wrote: »

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.

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?

I'm honestly not sure. If there was an international IP police force, I suppose arrests would be appropriate. Never invasion and occupation though.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

The Berne Convention does exist.

Archangle

Synthesis wrote: »

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.

*snip*

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.

COUGHBerneConventionCOUGHParis Convention for the Protection of Industrial PropertyCOUGH

It's true that it's not the same as putting another nation's law above their own sovereignty - the local law takes precedence - but it does mean that 73% and 80% of African nations (since that seems to be a popular theme around here) have to suck it up and defend copyright and patents respectively for foreigners because they have their own copyright/patent laws and have signed the agreements.

spacekungfuman

zagdrob wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

zagdrob wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

ronya wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

ronya wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

ronya wrote: »

The countries you most need to cooperate with sanctions, have most to lose from applying the sanctions.

This is exactly what you would expect from a system designed to force everyone to keep the system generating mutual gains from trade operational.

It's as if you had a police force where, every time a crime occurred, the sheriff had to go ask for posse of unpaid volunteers to risk their lives apprehending the criminal. You would have to have a rather flexible notion of 'crime' to make this sustainable.

I may well be wrong, but how valuable of a trade partner can one of these very poor African nations be? Especially in a world where the governments don't even really control their natural resources?

nations trade heavily with their neighbours. the neighbours of poor nations are often themselves poor. Chad's biggest trade partner is Cameroon.

Lets be simplistic here for the sake if a thought experiment. Why not make demands of the whole bloc of poor countries in the region and embargo them all until the group complies? Unless the region is a relevant trade partner for the first works, this seems like a way to fix the incentives, no?

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.

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?

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?

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.

The difference is that the IP theft is an act of man, vs those other natural occurrences. I think there is a very big difference between saying that you need to accept that a tornado may hit your business and we cannot stop it and saying "bad people will act badly and we just aren't good enough at our job of policing to stop them from being bad." At the very least, in the latter case I can reasonably say that something ought to be done (i.e., the regulators should do a better job) as opposed to literally screaming at a tornado.

Synthesis wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

Synthesis wrote: »

Phyphor wrote: »

Well they wouldn't be policing America obviously. Its those thieving African nations that are the problem!

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.

spacekungfuman wrote: »

The Ender wrote: »

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.

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?

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.

ronya wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

ronya wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

ronya wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

ronya wrote: »

The countries you most need to cooperate with sanctions, have most to lose from applying the sanctions.

This is exactly what you would expect from a system designed to force everyone to keep the system generating mutual gains from trade operational.

It's as if you had a police force where, every time a crime occurred, the sheriff had to go ask for posse of unpaid volunteers to risk their lives apprehending the criminal. You would have to have a rather flexible notion of 'crime' to make this sustainable.

I may well be wrong, but how valuable of a trade partner can one of these very poor African nations be? Especially in a world where the governments don't even really control their natural resources?

nations trade heavily with their neighbours. the neighbours of poor nations are often themselves poor. Chad's biggest trade partner is Cameroon.

Lets be simplistic here for the sake if a thought experiment. Why not make demands of the whole bloc of poor countries in the region and embargo them all until the group complies? Unless the region is a relevant trade partner for the first works, this seems like a way to fix the incentives, no?

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.

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?

affluency entails a domestic interest in intellectual property, no?

Small comfort to the multinationals whose brands have been devalued by piracy in the markets.

Synthesis wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

Synthesis wrote: »

The Ender wrote: »

Uh. There is an international body that enforces copyright / IP laws (among other laws): Interpol

Maybe Interpol isn't 'strong' enough in your view, whatever that means, but it certainly does exist and certainly does arrest people (i believe it was Interpol that ultimately arrested the Pirate Bay guys).

It seems to me that we are essentially in a situation where we have placed the more powerful (as measured by military power, global influence and wealth) 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. The question that I want to discuss in this thread is what, if any, enforcement efforts or self help are justified on behalf of the stronger nations in this scenario when the international community process fails them. Should they be able to pursue economic sanctions? Press for trade embargoes? Engage in targetted military action? Full scale invasion?

To keep this discussion focused, I would like to limit discussion to IP violations where the violator simply copies someone else's creation (i.e., generic drugs, knock off hand bags, boot legged movies) and not IP violations where people use someone else's work to create something new.

...This is a really racist & jingoistic statement, eh? Claiming that the brown people over there don't make any new IP, and since they have no ideas themselves, well of course they just steal ours.

African nations like Mozambique make their own drugs after analyzing proprietary drugs sold by western profiteers because they feel that they they are being price gouged / held hostage, and that the medicine required to stop the HIV epidemic should not be a protected-for-profit enterprise - that it is not 'stealing' something to see what the ingredients are and then make a similar product. I have a feeling that if, say, 15% of Colorado was infected with an incurable disease, and the IP holders of the mitigation treatment were based in New Guinea, there would be no outcry over the abuse of IP laws when American labs simply duplicate the treatment rather than having a state enter into ridiculously unfair / unreasonable financial debt to a foreign body.

it's also ridiculous to claim that America is 'at the mercy' of places like Zambia or South Africa because they are making knock-off drugs and American pharmaceutical companies aren't making the absolute maximum amount of profit that they could be.

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.

spacekungfuman wrote: »

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.

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?

I'm honestly not sure. If there was an international IP police force, I suppose arrests would be appropriate. Never invasion and occupation though.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

My scenario posits a global IP regime, set out in multiparty treaties. If we're shooting for the moon, right?

ronya

Like I said, you already have a status quo of surprisingly rigorous IP enforcement, relative to the historic status quo prior to the mid-1950s, which was when that Formerly Poor Country known as the US began to adopt the much longer copyright terms of the European states.

It's merely not a level of rigour that provides cathartic relief, I guess?

Harry Dresden

spacekungfuman wrote: »

My scenario posits a global IP regime, set out in multiparty treaties. If we're shooting for the moon, right?

Don't shoot for the moon, accept reality and lower your standards to goals that are possible.

spacekungfuman

ronya wrote: »

Like I said, you already have a status quo of surprisingly rigorous IP enforcement, relative to the historic status quo prior to the mid-1950s, which was when that Formerly Poor Country known as the US began to adopt the much longer copyright terms of the European states.

It's merely not a level of rigour that provides cathartic relief, I guess?

I don't think that's accurate. The first world is literally conceding China, India, and all of the third world more or less as markets. If there was no such thing as IP theft, I can't imagine that would be the case. That strikes me as a big deal.

ronya

And if we had fusion power and interstellar FTL, I would regard the prospect of their absence as a very big deal, too. I'm not sure what the purpose of speculating on hypotheticals here is. Let me bring up the point of three levels of collective-action problems again: there is no global enforcement of IP without resolving them.

If wishes were fishes, we could have much more than merely global enforcement of IP. Why stop there? Have the One World Government conduct massive transfer investment into the third world, too, so that the potential IP creators of these countries see that they too will benefit from a system of rigorous intellectual property within their own lifetime. And so forth. But this global hegemon doesn't exist.

Heffling

spacekungfuman wrote: »

ronya wrote: »

Like I said, you already have a status quo of surprisingly rigorous IP enforcement, relative to the historic status quo prior to the mid-1950s, which was when that Formerly Poor Country known as the US began to adopt the much longer copyright terms of the European states.

It's merely not a level of rigour that provides cathartic relief, I guess?

I don't think that's accurate. The first world is literally conceding China, India, and all of the third world more or less as markets. If there was no such thing as IP theft, I can't imagine that would be the case. That strikes me as a big deal.

The First World is not offering China, India, or any other countries any incentive to enforce our IP laws. Put yourself in their shoes, and tell me why they should?

redx

Heffling wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

ronya wrote: »

Like I said, you already have a status quo of surprisingly rigorous IP enforcement, relative to the historic status quo prior to the mid-1950s, which was when that Formerly Poor Country known as the US began to adopt the much longer copyright terms of the European states.

It's merely not a level of rigour that provides cathartic relief, I guess?

I don't think that's accurate. The first world is literally conceding China, India, and all of the third world more or less as markets. If there was no such thing as IP theft, I can't imagine that would be the case. That strikes me as a big deal.

The First World is not offering China, India, or any other countries any incentive to enforce our IP laws. Put yourself in their shoes, and tell me why they should?

We outsource a lot of production to those countries, which makes patent and trade dress infringement trivial. If there was a low cost labor market which respected IP, they would have a very strong competitive advantage. The threat of moving production elsewhere, if it was a real threat, would be a pretty decent motivator.

If nike moved production, I could put myself in some other country's shoes.

AngelHedgie

Heffling wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

ronya wrote: »

Like I said, you already have a status quo of surprisingly rigorous IP enforcement, relative to the historic status quo prior to the mid-1950s, which was when that Formerly Poor Country known as the US began to adopt the much longer copyright terms of the European states.

It's merely not a level of rigour that provides cathartic relief, I guess?

I don't think that's accurate. The first world is literally conceding China, India, and all of the third world more or less as markets. If there was no such thing as IP theft, I can't imagine that would be the case. That strikes me as a big deal.

The First World is not offering China, India, or any other countries any incentive to enforce our IP laws. Put yourself in their shoes, and tell me why they should?

Actually, China is getting to the same point regarding IP where the US was when we flipped our stance - as they move from net importer to net exporter, they will want their IP protected abroad. Honestly, the issue with lax IP enforcement is erosion of the primary IP markets via countries that have weak protections.

spacekungfuman

AngelHedgie wrote: »

Heffling wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

ronya wrote: »

Like I said, you already have a status quo of surprisingly rigorous IP enforcement, relative to the historic status quo prior to the mid-1950s, which was when that Formerly Poor Country known as the US began to adopt the much longer copyright terms of the European states.

It's merely not a level of rigour that provides cathartic relief, I guess?

I don't think that's accurate. The first world is literally conceding China, India, and all of the third world more or less as markets. If there was no such thing as IP theft, I can't imagine that would be the case. That strikes me as a big deal.

The First World is not offering China, India, or any other countries any incentive to enforce our IP laws. Put yourself in their shoes, and tell me why they should?

Actually, China is getting to the same point regarding IP where the US was when we flipped our stance - as they move from net importer to net exporter, they will want their IP protected abroad. Honestly, the issue with lax IP enforcement is erosion of the primary IP markets via countries that have weak protections.

I agree with this. China is reaching a point where it has valuable brands that extend outside its borders like Lenovo, and researchers creating new products and manufacturing methods, and they are going to want to have a viable external market to sell their wares in.

TheNomadicCircle

spacekungfuman wrote: »

Harry Dresden wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

ronya wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

ronya wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

ronya wrote: »

The countries you most need to cooperate with sanctions, have most to lose from applying the sanctions.

This is exactly what you would expect from a system designed to force everyone to keep the system generating mutual gains from trade operational.

It's as if you had a police force where, every time a crime occurred, the sheriff had to go ask for posse of unpaid volunteers to risk their lives apprehending the criminal. You would have to have a rather flexible notion of 'crime' to make this sustainable.

I may well be wrong, but how valuable of a trade partner can one of these very poor African nations be? Especially in a world where the governments don't even really control their natural resources?

nations trade heavily with their neighbours. the neighbours of poor nations are often themselves poor. Chad's biggest trade partner is Cameroon.

Lets be simplistic here for the sake if a thought experiment. Why not make demands of the whole bloc of poor countries in the region and embargo them all until the group complies? Unless the region is a relevant trade partner for the first works, this seems like a way to fix the incentives, no?

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.

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?

If it is impossible for a company to establish a "virgin" marketplace, change the strategy. Adapt.

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.

TheNomadicCircle wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

You said that need creates entitlement to the property of others. I want to know how far you will go with that.

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.

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.

You do not goosing get it do you? Try to keep up.

If I have a natural herb and an American company comes and takes what they needs and creates IP over it its goosing stealing from the people who used the natural herb and learnt how to use it in the first place. Are the American companies paying anyone to use the herb? No they are not. Should they, hell yes or get out of the third world and keep your inventions based on your own borders.

redx

TheNomadicCircle wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

Harry Dresden wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

ronya wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

ronya wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

ronya wrote: »

The countries you most need to cooperate with sanctions, have most to lose from applying the sanctions.

This is exactly what you would expect from a system designed to force everyone to keep the system generating mutual gains from trade operational.

It's as if you had a police force where, every time a crime occurred, the sheriff had to go ask for posse of unpaid volunteers to risk their lives apprehending the criminal. You would have to have a rather flexible notion of 'crime' to make this sustainable.

I may well be wrong, but how valuable of a trade partner can one of these very poor African nations be? Especially in a world where the governments don't even really control their natural resources?

nations trade heavily with their neighbours. the neighbours of poor nations are often themselves poor. Chad's biggest trade partner is Cameroon.

Lets be simplistic here for the sake if a thought experiment. Why not make demands of the whole bloc of poor countries in the region and embargo them all until the group complies? Unless the region is a relevant trade partner for the first works, this seems like a way to fix the incentives, no?

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.

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?

If it is impossible for a company to establish a "virgin" marketplace, change the strategy. Adapt.

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.

TheNomadicCircle wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

You said that need creates entitlement to the property of others. I want to know how far you will go with that.

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.

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.

You do not goosing get it do you? Try to keep up.

If I have a natural herb and an American company comes and takes what they needs and creates IP over it its goosing stealing from the people who used the natural herb and learnt how to use it in the first place. Are the American companies paying anyone to use the herb? No they are not. Should they, hell yes or get out of the third world and keep your inventions based on your own borders.

Maybe governments should protect their natural resources. Like, all the baksheesh those companies pay for permits to enter the country, tramp about rain forests, and leave with samples? The company paid them.

Heffling

AngelHedgie wrote: »

Heffling wrote: »

spacekungfuman wrote: »

ronya wrote: »

Like I said, you already have a status quo of surprisingly rigorous IP enforcement, relative to the historic status quo prior to the mid-1950s, which was when that Formerly Poor Country known as the US began to adopt the much longer copyright terms of the European states.

It's merely not a level of rigour that provides cathartic relief, I guess?

I don't think that's accurate. The first world is literally conceding China, India, and all of the third world more or less as markets. If there was no such thing as IP theft, I can't imagine that would be the case. That strikes me as a big deal.

The First World is not offering China, India, or any other countries any incentive to enforce our IP laws. Put yourself in their shoes, and tell me why they should?

Actually, China is getting to the same point regarding IP where the US was when we flipped our stance - as they move from net importer to net exporter, they will want their IP protected abroad. Honestly, the issue with lax IP enforcement is erosion of the primary IP markets via countries that have weak protections.

China has been a net exporter to the USA since at least 1985.

http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

I agree that they are developing their own brand identity with products such as Lenovo, but they are decades away from being at the point that equal enforcement of IP law will be to their benefit. It's not like first world countries are making knock-off Lenovo computers.