Besides, this is a separate discussion and is already answered here. IP hampers innovation as it is a way for patent holders to derive unfair profits from them. Objectivists are capitalists but believe in IP laws (crazy bastards ).
Not a single example that you mention exemplifies new innovation. You are living in a theoretical world that you read about in a book.
I'm not going to respond, because (a) I did give examples, but more importantly (b) as has been discussed a few times over the years, this topic warrants its own thread (Hawkeye said he'd start one sometime but he never got around to it).
Go try this: Come up with a breakthrough design that has never been seen before but that will need 30 million dollars to get it to production stage. Then go to various financiers and ask them for the money to do so but stipulate that upon completion of a successful marketable outcome you will provide the schematic and research freely to every Chinese factory that spent nothing on R&D so that they can begin producing it without any recompense. Let me know how it goes. I watched an industry that I won multiple awards in come to it's knees because of indiscriminate copying. I moved to another industry 5 years ago, in that time The Powerhouse Museum displayed one of our designs in an exhibition for 12 months and then wrote us a letter asking if the piece could become a part of their permanent collection (which it now is). We also have several of our designs on a 3 year tour around Australia in various galleries and museums. I am now watching this industry damaged to the point of bankruptcy for some designers because of the inability to protect their intellectual property. These motivated, productive people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a new design only to find that the their product is purchased, shipped to a Chinese factory and is back as a counterfeit within a month. Currently there are over a dozen sellers on Ebay Australia selling atrocious quality counterfeit copies of one of our designs with photos stolen from our website. We are robbed, the customer is robbed. If you think that it is good that the work and investment of a motivated person who makes innovation their job deserves to have the fruits of their labor taken from them by someone who did nothing but obtain that persons work and copy it then I don't know what to say except that you watch too much Max Keiser.
IP has been corporatised and has no relativity to artists or innovators any more. Witness the 'Downunder' case where a grasping company who purchased a 20 year old catalogue which had been bequeathed to the Guide Association and later sold, brought a case to bear against Men At Work - even though the original composer denied there was any similarity between her works and a flute riff used on the Men At Work song. Ditto the 'smiley face' which was a design created by an artist who didn't bother copyrighting it. A Frenchman later copyrighted it for use in Europe and has since extorted quite a few million Euros from companies using the simple smile face we see all the time: Copyright used to last 75 years from creation of work. Now the corporations own it they do things like release an album of songs in a run of 100 singles - simply to keep the copyright for another 100 years. These laws have also killed off parody and satire as the 'similarity' is enough to get a penniless artist sued and self-censorship is the worst type of censorship. IP stifles innovation and adds costs.
What you are talking about is the machination of middle men, not innovators themselves. Innovators, creators and those that sponsor them deserve the rewards of their risk taking. The lazy and opportunistic do not deserve the rewards of the labours of those creatives.
If corporations that hold copyrights are just parasitic and greedy then what are corporations that steal the work of others and flood the market with cheap copies, denying the reward of their labours to the creatives and those that fund their work? I will leave it there, as someone that has spent my entire working life in industries where I have seen good people broken by thieves I stand firmly for any person to reap the rewards of their risks and their labours and their time and their dream. If Warner Brothers ponies up 140 million dollars or so for each Harry Potter film, employing thousands in the film, photography and music industries and their associated support industries then I hope that they do nail those that create nothing but who steal and profit from their film. I don't like parasites and I think that IP pirates are beneath contempt. I would prefer to protect the financial interests of the studios that make such movies and that employ thousands of creatives and technicians than to give it all for free to some huge fat guy in New Zealand to buy himself a mansion and a garage full of sports cars because he is nothing but a rent seeker and a thief.
Yep. But there is so much worthwhile reading that my bookshelf is groaning from stuff that I have bought but am yet to read Like Mises Daily, a lot were reprints with only a couple of original/unique bits.
Its an interesting topic, IP. The whole idea that a group of Australian innovators working within a system that is trying to encourage innovation as a global competitive advantage, can have their work and income stolen by a group of Chinese communists working within an entirely different system of state sponsored industry and production, where in principle the concept of private property is disallowed or is made discretionary, is clearly ridiculous. But I also find it ridiculous that a particular colour, word, DNA sequence or things that are obviously just part of our public commons or providential heritage can be privatised. Seems pretty obvious that there needs to be a middle ground in regards to IP. I always thought that a 25 year or so limit on patents from original registration was pretty sensible. Giving the innovators time to capitalise on their inventions, but allowing for competitive innovative improvement once a product was commoditised. But the Chinese situation is a farce...and not only in IP.
I was interested to take a look at the book that you keep quoting "The Anti Capitalist Mentality" on Amazon, you have to pay for it and on the second page there is a 51 word warning that begins with "ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form...." I guess that the real world trumps theory every time. I won't be buying it.
This quote has been attributed to Henry Ford, but there is no evidence to dispel or confirm it: Even so, it provides an insight into the mind of one of the most successful entrepreneurs in history, a man who changed the course of history by meeting a perceived need of consumers. http://blogs.hbr.org/2011/08/henry-ford-never-said-the-fast/
I pirate the odd show. Think, game of thrones and breaking bad. I also buy those shows later on, when available on blu ray. I'll be buggered if I'm going to wait a whole year to see a certain tv programme because those companies decide to sell off tv rights to some pathetic pay tv company in Australia and deny me the rights to see said show within a reasonable timeframe.
I have no problem with that. Regionalization (or whatever they call it) of electronically transferable material is pointless, counterproductive, a bad way to treat your customers and encourages piracy these days. There is a need to protect wholesalers in each county from being flooded out by bigger countries and a good way to stop it is to release to every region at the same time. A story about hardware: Last year we began selling a very high tech product (a relatively low priced version of an expensive brainwave controlled system that the company released as a kind of more novelty line for them but still very powerful). It is region dependant - it is so sensitive that it will pick up mains electricity radiation while in use, so the Australian and Euro versions have fascist notch filters at 50Hz, the American/SAE versions have filters at 60 Hertz. Another seller here used to take them to exhibitions to sell at her stall, she imported and sold the correct 50Hz version. Then one day she found a couple of other stalls at each exhibition selling the incorrect 60Hz version imported in bulk from the US much cheaper that she could possibly sell for, her business was sunk. Customers bought from the cheaper stall and were not told that the units were not designed for Australia. She then started getting complaints that the product was crap and didn't work. Every time a user walked into a room with flourescent tubes or went near an electric fan or such the device would lose sync and act erratically. They had bought them from the rogue seller. They decided that it was the fault of the product, they didn't know that they had bought from a unscrupulous seller. The customers trashed the product's reputation on forums. The reputation of the product was unfairly trashed, she stopped buying them, we no longer sell them. Everybody loses.
Bringing this thread back on track (or towards it at least), this is (a slightly edited version of) the concluding section of Rothbard's economics magnum opus - Man, Economy and State (available for free download from HERE).
Maybe a revolution is on the way. This new way of preparing the new participants into society is now being taught in our schools, well in SA anyway. http://youtu.be/zDZFcDGpL4U Very interesting times ahead indeed, its a game changer.
