Chinese dilemma?

[Outofin]

Quick question: I heard from a friend that Mickey Mouse, which is invented more than half century ago, is not supposed to be protected by law. Its image should be free to use by the public. But Disney continues pushing the congress to extend their ownership, or something like that. Is it true?

[imron]

Kind of. Have a read of this, and also this.

[renzhe]

EDIT: already answered.

[DrWatson]

This is a problem with the economic system, which only values things you can sell. So you must sell ideas in order to make profit of intellectual work. If you took away IP legislation completely, then nVidia and similar companies would have to go back to trade secrets where possible, and the rest of the research would fall back to universities and research institutes which get their funding elsewhere, or people who develop ideas because they enjoy it, and not only for money. The upside would be that I wouldn't be arrested for watching a DVD on Linux.

The concept is still dumb, IMHO. You can't "own" an idea, and it clearly isn't property.

I'm still not clear on your definition of IP. So property is something you must be able to physically own? What about land? Does anyone really own land? After all, land is just a logical division of space based on the laws.

Someone had to come up with the technology for you to watch DVDs or even VHS. If there wasn't money to made off of that why would any company bother producing it? For the betterment of mankind???

I'm confused what you want to discus, economic systems or IP law systems? If you want to discuss economics lets take it to another thread. I'm not a "libertarian" or what not, I'm just trying to discuss reality as it is today. Whether it is stupid or not, for-profit organizations play a big deal in R&D in the world today.

Universities have never been the end-all-be-all of research. Maybe when Kings and Queens ruled the world researchers could do what they want. History tells us they were forced to figure out how to turn things into gold. Not much has changed with the modern world. Researchs want to do this and that, but to get the money to do their research, they need to produce results that their sponsers can use at the end of the day.

Regarding universities and IP, believe it or not, universities have HUGE patent portfolios. And they employ lawyers to protect their patents too. Just because they publish ideas in journals doesn't mean they don't patent them at the same time to make money off of it.

Much of the "computer revolution" happened in private labs of organizations like AT&T and Xerox. And what they didn't do in their labs, they often used their money to fund professors and grad students to take a look into. That is why professors spend so much of their time writing research and grant proposals. Private industries have always partnered with universities for research. But if private companies backed out of the system and left research to the universities, very little would be done my friend. Someone has to pay the universities, and in turn they have to pay the professors, and they in turn have to pay the graduate students, and in turn, someone has to produce results.

So at the end of the day, who pays for the research? There is a reason why university officials are tied hand-to hand-with business and politics--they must attract funding to their university! Whether it be from the private sector or the government, the money has to come form somewhere to pay for it all. And with that money, Dr. Johnson or Dr. Chang can pursue something they are mentally challenged by and enjoy. And the private sector pays for it because they thing they have an application for it, and they think that because somebody in some company believes they can turn it into a product to sell and make a profit out of.

[yonglin]

I think there's a major misunderstanding about property and ownership here, so let's go back to the basics.

"Knowledge" or "ideas" are non-rival goods in the sense that everyone can use them as much as they desire without limiting the benefits other people derive from them. Other non-rival goods include, say, radio and TV broadcasts, moonlight, etc. Contrast this with a rival good, say an ice-cream: if I eat an ice-cream, then surely I limit the benefits you can obtain from that ice-cream.

Goods which we cannot exclude other people from using are said to be "non-excludable". You may think about things like moonlight, street lights, or public roads. Non-rival goods may be either non-excludable (e.g., moonlight, military defence) or excludable (e.g., cable TV).

The problem with non-excludable goods is that they suffer from the so-called free-rider problem: if everyone knows that as soon as someone pays for the good, they won't need to pay themselves, but prefer to free-ride on others. If everyone thinks like this, then no one will be willing to pay for the good. That's why things like police, defence, street lights and public roads are usually provided by some state planner rather than through market forces.

If companies cannot exclude other people from their "knowledge" by intellectual property laws, they will have no incentive to produce any in the first place. They will just wait for other people to produce the knowledge/innovation, but since everyone will think in this way, we'd end up with nothing at all.

Given that there is some time lag (i.e.., you can obtain some profits to recover the cost of your research while other companies are figuring out how to copy your knowledge efficiently), some innovation is likely to take place, but the level will be inefficiently low, and not accurately reflect how much we would be willing to pay for innovation without the free-rider dilemma.

Of course, there are alternatives to intellectual property rights, which we may want to think about. We could let the government finance all innovation by levying a consumer tax reflecting the real value of technological innovation. However, it is very unlikely that it would be efficient in estimating the "value of innovation" to set the appropriate size of the tax, and even more unlikely that it would be able to allocate "innovation funds" to those firms (or perhaps, state-run organizations) which are most efficient at research. This is quite different from builiding a new road, for instance: road construction is a low-risk endeavour with well-lnown costs. Research is a high-risk endeavour about the costs the government does not have a clue.

Alternatively, we could simply assume that humanity is at the top of its development: we just don't need any more innovation. Then, it would be fine to abolish IP rights. Although followers of various green parties hold this kind of opinion, I personally find it a bit complacent and sad.

[renzhe]

I'm still not clear on your definition of IP. So property is something you must be able to physically own? What about land? Does anyone really own land? After all, land is just a logical division of space based on the laws.

Well, yes, this is physical property. Something you have monopoly of use over, because using it deprives other people of using the same thing. There have been different definitions of property throughout history, but the current one, based on the Roman law, is the right to use and abuse something you own.

I really don't want to get into a discussion on economic systems and the nature of property, there are plenty of philosophical works on the topic, from von Mises and Friedman to Proudhon and Marx, and this is really not the right forum for this.

But my point is that the "ownership" of ideas is a silly concept. You can talk about the importance of research, or the remuneration of artists and scientists, or the problem of investment and you do make a good argument, but this doesn't change the fact that "owning" an algorithm, or a process, or a sentence, or an equation is silly. Just like owning an emotion (and charging royalty). The IP laws have developed because they are a result of the economic system in use, but that doesn't make them logical or good.

Alternatively, we could simply assume that humanity is at the top of its development: we just don't need any more innovation.

Or we could simply assume that it is in human nature to innovate and that, with basic economic needs covered, they will continue to invent things.

Newton didn't own any patents, yet he innovated. Bach didn't need the Mickey Mouse Copyright act to write some of the most wonderful music ever conceived. The writers of Mnemosyne give their work for free, and we can all use it -- they don't profit from it, and roddy programmed the HSK database and gave it to all of us, and imron wrote pinyinput for all of us, again for free.

People will do inventive stuff because that's what people do. Witholding knowledge from people through legislation and prison sentences is inhumane.

[yonglin]

People will do inventive stuff because that's what people do. Witholding knowledge from people through legislation and prison sentences is inhumane.

You completely missed my point. I wasn't saying that innovation will not take place, but that it would not take place at an efficient level.

Presumably, Newton's innovations came at relatively little cost for him: as far as I'm aware, he was economically quite well off and spending his time pondering about physics and mathematics did not particularly infringe on his standard of living. Similarly, you could argue that artists should be driven predominantly by their passions, so that there will always be people innovating in those fields, such as Bach.

What I'm more concerned about, however, is things like developments in modern science: e.g., biotechnology, organic chemistry, or pharmacy. Such innovation demands an active research team and top facilities, which makes it an altogether extremely costly process. The risk involved in spending billions on developing a particular drug when it turns out that it has some unpredictable side effect making it uselss must also be taken into consideration. I'm quite convinced that if we don't keep some kind of intellectual property rights for that type of innovations, allowing pharmaceutical companies to recuperate their research costs in form of excessive profits for some time (at least in the developed world), I'm quite convinced that very few new drugs will ever be invented. Relying on some people shouldering these costs for purely philantropic reasons seems a bit naive to me.

(Of course, the current system is not ideal, since most drug development is being geared to the most lucrative areas (not necessarily those where new drugs are needed the most), but it is very difficult to see how a planned type system would do a better job.)

[renzhe]

Relying on some people shouldering these costs for purely philantropic reasons seems a bit naive to me.

I do understand the problems inherent in some specialised fields which are always used as an example why patents are needed.

But I also feel that if we can spend ridiculous amounts of money on weapons, warfare, corporate welfare, political campaign funding, etc., hell, we could easily fund all that research that falls into this category.

Actually, if you took all the money that the states spend today enforcing IP rights, and channeled it into open research instead, you'd probably come out ahead. Don't forget that IP legislation actually vastly increases the cost of research, because you have to have a huge legal team to clear you of any existing patents, and huge research teams to tread around these (often obvious) patents, and you have to rediscover the wheel many times over instead of sharing information with other researchers. And, in the case of pharma industry, the taxpayers pay for the vast majority of the testing and certification process anyway.

Yeah, it's not something you do in a day, and it's very unlikely in today's political climate, but I simply don't accept the "We'd rather build nuclear missiles and wage war than fund research" as a good excuse for IP laws. We have plenty of funds, and we're using them for all the wrong things.

but it is very difficult to see how a planned type system would do a better job

Just to be clear, I'm not advocating a Leninist state-run planned system.

But if you get enough bright researchers, give them money to research, and tell them "Hey, boys and girls, go and find the cancer cure", they'll be all over it like rabid dogs. Nowadays, you can't do that kind of research without being killed by no-competition contracts claiming all your private life as corporate IP, and where you live in constant fear of IP litigation.

[imron]

The problem with non-excludable goods is that they suffer from the so-called free-rider problem: if everyone knows that as soon as someone pays for the good, they won't need to pay themselves, but prefer to free-ride on others. If everyone thinks like this, then no one will be willing to pay for the good.

At least in the field of arts, (and I know this is not necessarily the field you were talking about) this is not the case. Of course there will always be freeloaders, but there will also be plenty of people willing to pay a fair and reasonable amount to support the artists/authors/musicians that they like. Mounting evidence also seems to suggest what many people have long suspected, that having the works available for free actually helps increase sales of the physical goods, because it acts as advertising and marketing.

[outcast]

I don't agree with Outcast and his assertion about cultural bankruptcy. I must admit I've never heard of corporate spies trying to claim insider trading is "cultural", then again, that was probably the lawyer speaking and lawyers will say anything. I suspect it is more just a cop-out and the guilty are trying to get off.

As I said earlier, this is basically an issue of using one's culture as an excuse for justification of injustices. Lets flip this a bit: What if people in the US, instead of doing something to stop something like hate crimes, just made excuses such as "it's part of our cultural tradition" or "we have a long history of lynching" to justify it? How would that make us look to the outside world? Do you seriously believe anyone would give us even the slightest bit of respect? Of course not.

While this is an extreme example, but it is still the same idea.

It's funny how nobody was bothered by the RAMPANT industrial espionage and reverse engineering going on in the West for the last 150 years,

Untrue, the Europeans were often unhappy with US industrial espionage and reverse engineering throughout the 19th century.

The truth is that there are certain stereotypes which still live in the European and American consciousness. The Germans are hard working and wise, the Americans are practical, the Chinese are diligent, but too stupid to think on their own, the blacks are criminal, the Arabs are terrorists, etc. It's unfortunate, but it's true.

These stereotypes exist because there is a prominent group in each of these groups, whether they be a majority or a minority, who are a certain way. For the "blacks are criminals" stereotype, lets looks at some statistics:

¶The share of young black men without jobs has climbed relentlessly, with only a slight pause during the economic peak of the late 1990's. In 2000, 65 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20's were jobless — that is, unable to find work, not seeking it or incarcerated. By 2004, the share had grown to 72 percent, compared with 34 percent of white and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts. Even when high school graduates were included, half of black men in their 20's were jobless in 2004, up from 46 percent in 2000.

¶Incarceration rates climbed in the 1990's and reached historic highs in the past few years. In 1995, 16 percent of black men in their 20's who did not attend college were in jail or prison; by 2004, 21 percent were incarcerated. By their mid-30's, 6 in 10 black men who had dropped out of school had spent time in prison.

¶In the inner cities, more than half of all black men do not finish high school.

Statistics speak for themselves.

I believe that most posters on this forum do not think like this, because of the very nature of this forum, but I personally know a Chinese person who failed her MBA exam in Germany because she dared to suggest in an oral exam that the German companies didn't transfer all of the knowledge to the Chinese side while building the Transrapid. The German prof simply couldn't handle this disobedience, despite references to contemporary Chinese articles and such. He wanted to hear that the Germans were educating the Chinese, who can't think. Otherwise, you fail your exam.

That was indeed unfortunate, but I'm going to play devils advocate for a moment (even though I dont think he did the right thing): Why should he believe Chinese can think when China has effectively invented nothing for 700 years? Until the last 10-15 years it hasn't made any real scientific contributions either.

[renzhe]

To recap:

Blacks are criminals

Chinese are dumb

Racial stereotypes are not always true, only most of the time

Americans are not culturally bankrupt because they never use their culture as an excuse

Wow.

[outcast]

Americans are not culturally bankrupt because they never use their culture as an excuse

Blacks are criminals

Racial stereotypes are not always true, only most of the time

Chinese are dumb

That isn't what I said by any stretch of the imagination, you're twisting my meaning to fit your pre-conceived notions about western attitudes.

It's truely a sad day when political correctness stops us from stating blatantly obvious and well established facts.

[chenpv]

The title of the thread needs modification. The OP is confusing 'knowledge' with 'Intelligence'.

[DrWatson]

As I said earlier, this is basically an issue of using one's culture as an excuse for justification of injustices. Lets flip this a bit: What if people in the US, instead of doing something to stop something like hate crimes, just made excuses such as "it's part of our cultural tradition" or "we have a long history of lynching" to justify it? How would that make us look to the outside world? Do you seriously believe anyone would give us even the slightest bit of respect? Of course not.

While this is an extreme example, but it is still the same idea.

I'm not sure it is a cultural trait though. To me the couple was simply offering up a last-effort copout, trying to play the foreigner card at best. It is what they said, it is not a symptom of a "bankrupt culture". You might say this couple are morally bankrupt, but you can't put the fault with Chinese culture at large. People have and still do try to use religion to justify their means. We don't make sweeping generalizations about Christianity or Islam or any other religion though.

I don't think such a copout would work in a court in Taiwan or Hong Kong either. And I doubt it would work in the PRC either if it were tried. I'm not sure how the PRC legal system handles financial crimes so I can't really comment any further. I seriously doubt a judge would stand for it though.

[renzhe]

It's truely a sad day when political correctness stops us from stating blatantly obvious and well established facts.

I don't particularly care for political correctness, I'm just extremely averse when people jump on every opportunity to go on about racial and cultural superiority. Especially people going on about the moral inferiority of Chinese people on a forum full of Chinese people helping others learn their language and culture by sharing their knowledge and offering help.

You're not stating well established facts, you're stating selected parts of well-established facts in order to defend statements like "blacks are criminals" and "Chinese are dumb".

The "established facts" are very complex and involve stagnation during the Qing dinasty and Chinese political situation throughout the 20th century, and the social situation of many minorities in many parts of US and Europe, and the moral bankruptcy of their legal and penal systems. Two American in the US break laws and use a race defense in the American court, and this shows the moral bankruptcy of the Chinese people? How come nobody uses this defense in China?

[lilongyue]

Well, I seem to be the least educated about the history of industrial espionage, what constitutes property and a host of other things when compared to those who have already posted in this thread, but to me the whole IPR issue always boiled down to money. To try and separate a discussion of it from economics won't work, I think. I recently had a long debate with a friend of mine about this same issue. He is very into open source software, and believes that open source models like the one Linux/Ubuntu has, or any of the related programs, is the model for the future, and proves that copyrights, etc., aren't necessary. Being the pessimist I am, I said that without the big paycheck dangling at the end of the stick, many people (not all) wouldn't be motivated enough to put in the hard work to create the cures for diseases, new software, faster processors, etc. At the time I thought of Communist countries like China, and my impression of life during the height of Communism here (not that I know personally, so it may very well be flawed), namely that of unmotivated people slogging through work to get their food coupons; doctors, farmers, soldiers and technicians alike enjoying the same level of subsistence living. Communism has obvious failed miserably, in fact I wonder if there were any major innovations in any Communist countries? I know no one is advocating Communism, but wouldn't a major shift of economic systems be required to make major changes to the concept of IPR?

Personally, I would like to think that what my friend and renzhe believe, that there is an alternative view/approach to these issues, is possible. What was mentioned about the sci-fi book made freely available for download, and the impact of that on its actual sales, is heartening news. I've just started getting into Noam Chomsky, and he advocates a different economic system, one that doesn't include the exploitation, manipulation and inequalities that are inherent in the current capitalist system that runs most of the world. As I've said, I've just started getting into him, so I can't really describe what he thinks is a better solution right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't someone else on this forum who is into Chomsky. Anyone? Or is that getting to far off-topic?

In regards to Chinese culture as a whole being open with or about anything, I'd quote the old saying:

各人自扫门前雪

莫管他人瓦上霜

[gato]

I've just started getting into Noam Chomsky, and he advocates a different economic system, one that doesn't include the exploitation, manipulation and inequalities that are inherent in the current capitalist system that runs most of the world. As I've said, I've just started getting into him, so I can't really describe what he thinks is a better solution right now, but I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't someone else on this forum who is into Chomsky. Anyone? Or is that getting to far off-topic?

I've heard him say in interviews that he favors "anarcho-syndicalism," which seems to me just "communism" by another name -- the idealistic version of communism with no government, coming after the perfection of socialism, as opposed to real world communism, which might be called Leninism.

[imron]

and proves that copyrights, etc., aren't necessary

This is one of the major misconceptions about open-source software. Open source software, and specifically GPLed software relies on copyright in order to achieve its effect. The beauty is, that it turns copyright on its head and gives you more rights, rather than taking them away.

The majority of open-source software is not in the public domain, and the original authors still retain copyright to it. There have been several cases recently where companies using open-source software but not abiding by the license governing that software, have been taken to court, and so far, each time they have lost, thanks to copyright.

[ipsi()]

I think, barring a few insane nuts, that most OSS fans would be extremely happy with a major revision of copyright and patent laws...

Me, I'd be happy to see copyright reduced to 5 - 10 years, as opposed to, what, life + 70, or whatever insane number it's at now, and something done about software patents (along with other fuzzy patents that do more harm than good).

But that's just my opinion.

[imron]

I think the original copyright terms were about right, 14 years, that could be extended for a further 14 years at the end of the first term.

Patents could do with an overhaul, namely business methods shouldn't be patentable, and there should apply far stricter standards for obviousness before granting a patent. There are just far too many obvious patents being granted nowadays, and it stiffles innovation.

The fact remains, that without copyright, things like the GPL would be unenforceable.