Almost Got It
While in the car I heard a discussion on All Things Considered concerning the ‘Net shutdown in response to SOPA/PIPA with James Fallows of The Atlantic.
Fallows almost understands the reaction of the technology sector, as he points out that Google is so concerned with its intellectual property rights that it refuses to send any source code to China. He then opines that technology companies don’t view movies and music in the same way.
Actually, we are well aware of the status of movies and music as intellectual property, but we have no intention of having additional costs and aggravation placed on us, when the owners to the rights of the movies and music do stupid things, like shipping them to China for reproduction.
The Chinese are new to the ‘free market’ and they view it as being truly free, in the libertarian sense. They don’t have any history of ‘intellectual property laws’, so it is a totally foreign concept. In their view if they know how to do something, and people will pay them to do it, they should do it. If, after they fulfill a contract for copies of a DVD for a media company, someone else offers them money for copies of the same DVD, they sell them – ‘free market’.
Technology companies learned this the hard way, which is why the best have strict controls on what is sent to China.
2 comments
Most so-called free marketers just can’t get their heads around the fact that there is no such thing as “intellectual property” in nature. Like real estate titles or incorporation, IP is a privilege granted to certain individuals by the rest of us. What’s more, these legal constructs, in theory at least, are intended to benefit Society and only incidentally those particular individuals privileged by them.
To have a truly free market you have to get rid of all regulations, including those on intellectual property, and those that create corporations. Contracts only have meaning if there is a government to enforce them.
The modern business environment can’t exist without regulation, and only fools and knaves claim not to believe that.