IP law is stupid, and it ties American hands from being innovative. It's anti-freedom, and I want nothing to do with it. Organize your property how you please and sell it to who you want.
I work in the tool industry. Why would we spend 18 months designing a new tool, building ridiculously expensive prototypes, testing these rigorously, tweaking the geometry for strength and reliability... if as soon as we sell one of those tools everyone else is allowed to create copies? Since they don't have to spend 18 months paying teams of engineers to design the thing they can sell it for pennies-over cost and still make money, instead of dollars over cost like we have to. A total lack of IP laws would put us out of business instantly. Meaningful innovation would only happen with DRM. Your drill won't work unless you type in today's subscriber code. You have to log into our portal to enable your tractor for this week, and if they think it's pirated, the company will send a kill-code. Fuck all that.
And it does happen that fast. I've seen counterfeit products in under a year that were clearly made using our molds (not even molds taken from our products). Either worn-out molds we discarded, or they just ordered duplicates from the machine house that did ours.
Medical field even more so. You spend millions of dollars on predictive molecule analysis to try to find a compound to cure XYZ. You then have to spend millions of dollars testing thousands of compounds to find one that works. Then you have to spend millions of dollars making sure drug #455654 doesn't have side effects in years-long trials. Great. Now you go to sell it, and next month ChinaMax Drugs offers the same compound for pennies on the dollar - after all there's literally $100M worth of work they don't have to recoup. You go out of business. Is ChinaMax Drugs gonna do all that work to create the next new drug? Hell no. So now pharmaceutical innovation ceases.
And in the mean time, they don't tell you what's in the drug, because that would help ChinaMax copy it faster. Which is more dangerous for everyone, because you can't predict interactions, allergies, etc.
Entertainment industry: Are they going to spend millions on special effects, cgi, renting locations, lighting, cameras? Not if every theater can show the movie for free as soon as it's released. Not if netflix can show it without paying the producers. The only way entertainment survives is if it becomes nonstop product placement or paid propaganda (TBF we're basically there already, so this one doesn't bother me).
IP laws have grown out of control and need to be reformed, but complete abolishment is not the answer unless you wish to return to the 1920s.
I once worked with trademarks at a law firm and was told that the Chinese would take an American product, copy it right down to the packaging and sell it as the legitimate item. The Chinese courts didn't care.
In general, East Asians are not particularly original, but are good at taking someone else's technology and improving on it.
While I understand your concern, I don't believe the ends justify the means. I believe in property rights - people can do whatever they want with their own property so long as they don't use it to cause physical harm to peaceful people. That includes transforming their property into whatever shape they please. "Intellectual property" directly contradicts this basic right. IP is anti-free-market.
I'm in an industry that would be completely upended if IP law went away. But me losing my job doesn't make IP right. It's understandable, but it's still wrong.
Another aspect of the IP law position worth considering is this: proponents of IP law always couch it in terms of being the ONLY means of motivating innovation. That's absurd on its face - innovation would not come to a standstill just because some bureaucrat isn't standing around telling people what they can and can't manufacture and sell. There's lots of alternatives:
Industry secrets
Street performer protocol
First mover advantage
Competition on quality instead of monopolizing a product
Branding & trust
Getting rid of IP in the US would cause immense upheaval in the business world, but it would also cause the greatest boon to innovation and growth that we've seen since our inception.
Branding and trust? In a world with no IP every truck is a F150. Everyone makes FORD trucks now. You have to go to the factory directly, take the tour to know they are real fords, and then buy one. And how do they get airbags? The now have to own the entire supply chain to make sure knockoff airbags aren't shipped instead of the real ones, or have 100% testing (which is hard to do for things that only develop problems over the course of years - like airbags). And this applies to every purchase, and every component in that purchase - of which there are thousands.
And if the airbags are faulty and explode... oh well, that wasn't the f150 I made, someone else made that ford.
Competition on quality doesn't exist when you can freely counterfeit anything. That just means you are selling to whoever can appear to have the most quality on an item when it's in the box. Which hoover are you going to buy? They're all in red boxes, they all look about the same... can you tell which HOOVEROUND 5.0 is better than the others? Not without buying them all. And if you find one you like... you better buy several of them, because next time you go shopping every 2nd-teir manufacturer will have copied the most successful packaging.
First mover advantage now only applies temporarily to complex products that are difficult to produce. The benefit of people remembering "Oh yeah I liked that Vive VR headset, I should get the new version" doesn't mean shit when 50 different VR headsets are now called vive. Plus, if you don't own your factories you can now get beat by your contract manufacturer. Nothing is stopping them from simultaneously producing vive headsets and launching them at the same time yours hit shelves.
CMs can make orders of magnitude more for knocking off your product. And if you find one that doesn't, they are going to charge that order of magnitude more to pay for the privilege, and only keep it until they get a contract big enough to justify ruining their reputation for. Manufacturing just got 50% more expensive, and you have to make sure you're talking to the correct "NoKnockoffs Inc" because after all, other companies are free to do business under that name.
Startups - who generally have razor thin margins and have to use contract manufacturers - don't exist anymore. CMs will undercut them before their product even hits store shelves. All the power will be consolidated into a few megacorps - the ones who can keep all their trade secrets and as much of the supply chain as possible within their walls.
SPP works for niche products and digital goods. Basically, you get X number of people to crowdfund the existence of a thing. However, it would be kneecapped if everyone knew they could get the thing for free if other people are willing to pay. I'm not gonna buy avengers #10 if I think everyone else will, I'm only gonna buy weird niche stuff I like.
While we would see innovation in a post-IP world it would be in things like DRM, trade secret protection, how to fill your electronics with epoxy so nobody can figure out how they are made. Imagine trying to repair electronics and every component is unmarked and covered in glue.
I skimmed AIP and it raises some good points, but falls short of convincing me that all ip laws are unjust. I absolutely support reducing patent and copyright terms, decriminalizing non-commercial copyright infringement, and expanding fair-use protections. But the premise that all ip protections should be abolished seems to be a short-sighted, reducio-ad-absurdium interpretation of libertarian philosophy.
Mmmhmm yep, this is the way these discussions usually go. You point out that it's fundamentally unethical to enforce IP law, that it's absurd to think that government violence is the only possible solution to the issue, offer some other potential solutions (and at no point declare them a comprehensive list). They respond by poking speculative holes in your potential solutions and saying "See? See? This is why we need to use violence against peaceful people!"
Because they don't really get it. They haven't internalized the real violence that they are advocating, so they focus on the ends-justify-the-means, utilitarian perspective. It's all they know, after all.
So here's what I'll do. I'll point out again that the only real argument to have here is the principled one, which you lose. Then I'll play your utilitarian game and poke holes in your speculative utilitarian arguments. Then I'll walk, because your eyes aren't open, and you won't see what you can't. Ready? Here goes:
Your argument is entirely utilitarian. The real issue at hand here is about when it's okay to use violence against peaceful people: never. No utilitarian argument can ever make it okay to kidnap or kill peaceful people. Full stop. And that's literally what we're talking about here. To enforce the laws you're advocating, people must live under the threat or actual enactment of imprisonment or death. Sure, there's some intermediate steps like fines or license revocation, but any resistance to such leads inevitably to imprisonment or death. That's not freedom, it's not liberty, and it's not my American way.
Now on to the spurious bit of this discussion:
In a world with no IP every truck is a F150.
Nope. Well, no more true than it is today, at any rate. The IP protections you're advocating for today are enforced by mere humans, after all. There's no reason to believe that the same species couldn't find knockoffs and validate components the same way they do today. The difference being that the information would be used to select components and products instead of violating liberty.
Plus, if you don't own your factories you can now get beat by your contract manufacturer. Nothing is stopping them from simultaneously producing vive headsets and launching them at the same time yours hit shelves.
until they get a contract big enough to justify ruining their reputation for
It's not like people lose their bad reputation just because their business went under. People don't want to do business with you because they don't want to be associated with your stink. Good luck buying toilet paper, it's gonna cost you 1000% more to pay for the privilege of people risking their reputations for you.
SPP works for niche products and digital goods.
Yep. I won't bother arguing about whether or not the approach applies elsewhere. The point is that it's a possible solution to a facet of the problem, which is what we'll ultimately have - a body of interacting techniques and incentives (that probably evolve together over time) to drive innovation and wealth. Not some top-down, authoritarian solution that relies on unethical violence.
Imagine trying to repair electronics and every component is unmarked and covered in glue.
shrug I guess you can buy that kinda stuff if you want. I'd spend my money on the companies that cater to my desires, one of them being easily/cheaply repaired products that last a long time.
None of this argument is super important. Humanity has been on a long and storied path towards greater and greater liberty for millennia, and IP law is simply another domino that's going to fall. One interesting question to ask yourself might be: how long are you willing to prop up that domino in the US, hamstringing us while the rest of the world moves on towards more and more prosperity? China will not be the last example of this.
Anyway, this is the part where I walk. As a free-market, freedom-loving American, I've got shit to build! Cya in the future :)
IP law is stupid, and it ties American hands from being innovative. It's anti-freedom, and I want nothing to do with it. Organize your property how you please and sell it to who you want.
I work in the tool industry. Why would we spend 18 months designing a new tool, building ridiculously expensive prototypes, testing these rigorously, tweaking the geometry for strength and reliability... if as soon as we sell one of those tools everyone else is allowed to create copies? Since they don't have to spend 18 months paying teams of engineers to design the thing they can sell it for pennies-over cost and still make money, instead of dollars over cost like we have to. A total lack of IP laws would put us out of business instantly. Meaningful innovation would only happen with DRM. Your drill won't work unless you type in today's subscriber code. You have to log into our portal to enable your tractor for this week, and if they think it's pirated, the company will send a kill-code. Fuck all that.
And it does happen that fast. I've seen counterfeit products in under a year that were clearly made using our molds (not even molds taken from our products). Either worn-out molds we discarded, or they just ordered duplicates from the machine house that did ours.
Medical field even more so. You spend millions of dollars on predictive molecule analysis to try to find a compound to cure XYZ. You then have to spend millions of dollars testing thousands of compounds to find one that works. Then you have to spend millions of dollars making sure drug #455654 doesn't have side effects in years-long trials. Great. Now you go to sell it, and next month ChinaMax Drugs offers the same compound for pennies on the dollar - after all there's literally $100M worth of work they don't have to recoup. You go out of business. Is ChinaMax Drugs gonna do all that work to create the next new drug? Hell no. So now pharmaceutical innovation ceases.
And in the mean time, they don't tell you what's in the drug, because that would help ChinaMax copy it faster. Which is more dangerous for everyone, because you can't predict interactions, allergies, etc.
Entertainment industry: Are they going to spend millions on special effects, cgi, renting locations, lighting, cameras? Not if every theater can show the movie for free as soon as it's released. Not if netflix can show it without paying the producers. The only way entertainment survives is if it becomes nonstop product placement or paid propaganda (TBF we're basically there already, so this one doesn't bother me).
IP laws have grown out of control and need to be reformed, but complete abolishment is not the answer unless you wish to return to the 1920s.
I once worked with trademarks at a law firm and was told that the Chinese would take an American product, copy it right down to the packaging and sell it as the legitimate item. The Chinese courts didn't care.
In general, East Asians are not particularly original, but are good at taking someone else's technology and improving on it.
While I understand your concern, I don't believe the ends justify the means. I believe in property rights - people can do whatever they want with their own property so long as they don't use it to cause physical harm to peaceful people. That includes transforming their property into whatever shape they please. "Intellectual property" directly contradicts this basic right. IP is anti-free-market.
I'm in an industry that would be completely upended if IP law went away. But me losing my job doesn't make IP right. It's understandable, but it's still wrong.
Another aspect of the IP law position worth considering is this: proponents of IP law always couch it in terms of being the ONLY means of motivating innovation. That's absurd on its face - innovation would not come to a standstill just because some bureaucrat isn't standing around telling people what they can and can't manufacture and sell. There's lots of alternatives:
Getting rid of IP in the US would cause immense upheaval in the business world, but it would also cause the greatest boon to innovation and growth that we've seen since our inception.
If you're interested in learning more, I'd recommend "Against Intellectual Monopoly" by Boldrin and Levine, or "Against Intellectual Property" by Kinsella: https://mises.org/library/against-intellectual-property-0
Branding and trust? In a world with no IP every truck is a F150. Everyone makes FORD trucks now. You have to go to the factory directly, take the tour to know they are real fords, and then buy one. And how do they get airbags? The now have to own the entire supply chain to make sure knockoff airbags aren't shipped instead of the real ones, or have 100% testing (which is hard to do for things that only develop problems over the course of years - like airbags). And this applies to every purchase, and every component in that purchase - of which there are thousands.
And if the airbags are faulty and explode... oh well, that wasn't the f150 I made, someone else made that ford.
Competition on quality doesn't exist when you can freely counterfeit anything. That just means you are selling to whoever can appear to have the most quality on an item when it's in the box. Which hoover are you going to buy? They're all in red boxes, they all look about the same... can you tell which HOOVEROUND 5.0 is better than the others? Not without buying them all. And if you find one you like... you better buy several of them, because next time you go shopping every 2nd-teir manufacturer will have copied the most successful packaging.
First mover advantage now only applies temporarily to complex products that are difficult to produce. The benefit of people remembering "Oh yeah I liked that Vive VR headset, I should get the new version" doesn't mean shit when 50 different VR headsets are now called vive. Plus, if you don't own your factories you can now get beat by your contract manufacturer. Nothing is stopping them from simultaneously producing vive headsets and launching them at the same time yours hit shelves.
CMs can make orders of magnitude more for knocking off your product. And if you find one that doesn't, they are going to charge that order of magnitude more to pay for the privilege, and only keep it until they get a contract big enough to justify ruining their reputation for. Manufacturing just got 50% more expensive, and you have to make sure you're talking to the correct "NoKnockoffs Inc" because after all, other companies are free to do business under that name.
Startups - who generally have razor thin margins and have to use contract manufacturers - don't exist anymore. CMs will undercut them before their product even hits store shelves. All the power will be consolidated into a few megacorps - the ones who can keep all their trade secrets and as much of the supply chain as possible within their walls.
SPP works for niche products and digital goods. Basically, you get X number of people to crowdfund the existence of a thing. However, it would be kneecapped if everyone knew they could get the thing for free if other people are willing to pay. I'm not gonna buy avengers #10 if I think everyone else will, I'm only gonna buy weird niche stuff I like.
While we would see innovation in a post-IP world it would be in things like DRM, trade secret protection, how to fill your electronics with epoxy so nobody can figure out how they are made. Imagine trying to repair electronics and every component is unmarked and covered in glue.
I skimmed AIP and it raises some good points, but falls short of convincing me that all ip laws are unjust. I absolutely support reducing patent and copyright terms, decriminalizing non-commercial copyright infringement, and expanding fair-use protections. But the premise that all ip protections should be abolished seems to be a short-sighted, reducio-ad-absurdium interpretation of libertarian philosophy.
Mmmhmm yep, this is the way these discussions usually go. You point out that it's fundamentally unethical to enforce IP law, that it's absurd to think that government violence is the only possible solution to the issue, offer some other potential solutions (and at no point declare them a comprehensive list). They respond by poking speculative holes in your potential solutions and saying "See? See? This is why we need to use violence against peaceful people!"
Because they don't really get it. They haven't internalized the real violence that they are advocating, so they focus on the ends-justify-the-means, utilitarian perspective. It's all they know, after all.
So here's what I'll do. I'll point out again that the only real argument to have here is the principled one, which you lose. Then I'll play your utilitarian game and poke holes in your speculative utilitarian arguments. Then I'll walk, because your eyes aren't open, and you won't see what you can't. Ready? Here goes:
Your argument is entirely utilitarian. The real issue at hand here is about when it's okay to use violence against peaceful people: never. No utilitarian argument can ever make it okay to kidnap or kill peaceful people. Full stop. And that's literally what we're talking about here. To enforce the laws you're advocating, people must live under the threat or actual enactment of imprisonment or death. Sure, there's some intermediate steps like fines or license revocation, but any resistance to such leads inevitably to imprisonment or death. That's not freedom, it's not liberty, and it's not my American way.
Now on to the spurious bit of this discussion:
Nope. Well, no more true than it is today, at any rate. The IP protections you're advocating for today are enforced by mere humans, after all. There's no reason to believe that the same species couldn't find knockoffs and validate components the same way they do today. The difference being that the information would be used to select components and products instead of violating liberty.
It's not like people lose their bad reputation just because their business went under. People don't want to do business with you because they don't want to be associated with your stink. Good luck buying toilet paper, it's gonna cost you 1000% more to pay for the privilege of people risking their reputations for you.
Yep. I won't bother arguing about whether or not the approach applies elsewhere. The point is that it's a possible solution to a facet of the problem, which is what we'll ultimately have - a body of interacting techniques and incentives (that probably evolve together over time) to drive innovation and wealth. Not some top-down, authoritarian solution that relies on unethical violence.
shrug I guess you can buy that kinda stuff if you want. I'd spend my money on the companies that cater to my desires, one of them being easily/cheaply repaired products that last a long time.
None of this argument is super important. Humanity has been on a long and storied path towards greater and greater liberty for millennia, and IP law is simply another domino that's going to fall. One interesting question to ask yourself might be: how long are you willing to prop up that domino in the US, hamstringing us while the rest of the world moves on towards more and more prosperity? China will not be the last example of this.
Anyway, this is the part where I walk. As a free-market, freedom-loving American, I've got shit to build! Cya in the future :)