Intellectual property law should be crafted in ways that benefit a society's progress in arts and science and whatever other fields that involve intellectual work. However, the attitudes of the public must change in order to accommodate this.
Current intellectual property laws benefit a society indirectly by granting its owners the exclusive right to do whatever they wish with it, including selling it. "The argument has always been that, without protection, people would not let the public have the benefit of the good ideas they had" [1]. An absence of copyright laws would discourage the creation and development of (1) original or new intellectual work. In China, where the "Western conceptions for intellectual property" are "inhospitable" [1] and copyright laws are weakly enforced, piracy is rampant and "is one factor hampering China's development of its domestic software industry, which lags much of Asia" [2].
Vigorous enforcement of copyright laws is likely to have little effect as most people excuse piracy and other copyright violations of software and music, as it's difficult to perceive any victims of a crime or any crime at all. Perhaps they feel that the monopolies granted by the copyright laws embolden companies to charge above market prices for the products they are selling. Simple economics would (2) suggest that, if the public perceived the cost as fair and reasonable, then the rate of piracy would stop.
QuickTax is a tax software program that can be purchased as low as $20 at some stores. Its anti-piracy feature is a three key system, without which the program can't run. The first key is the CD-key needed to install the program. The program generates the second key after being installed. For the third key, the user who legally purchased the software must submit these two keys to Quicken (the company that developed the software). Simple economics would seem to suggest that at that price, it would be more rational for a person who nets more than $20/hr to remain at work rather than spend an hour of his time to bother cracking through this. Well, I (3) know at least two irrational people one of them was successful because of some information provided in an Internet message posting by another irrational person.
No matter how many laws are put in place and how many levels of technological protection one puts around their intellectual property, there will likely be someone who attempts to break it -- despite the legal, technological and economical barriers.
Sometimes merchants will place their wares outside of the store to advertise sales and generate interest. Often these wares are unguarded, as the merchant has to remain by the cash register to handle sales transactions. Despite the ease of stealing these goods and probably getting away with it unnoticed, most don't as it goes against their moral conscience of right and wrong. A few years ago, the music-playing program WinAMP went from freeware to shareware. With shareware licenses, the user typically gets a limited free trial usage before being required to pay some registration fee for continued use of the software. WinAMP did not have any technological barriers to stop users from continuing to use the program after the expiration date. Simple economics would suggest that people wouldn't bother paying the registration fee at all since there was no real penalty for not doing so, yet people did pay the fee because they enjoyed the program and wanted to support the development team. Anecdotes like these suggest that it may be more (4) effective to educate the public about the merits of intellectual copyright laws then to rely on legislation alone.
References
[1] Vaver, David. Intellectual Property Ch1 -- An Overview. (1997)
[2] CNN.com. China urged to intensify piracy crackdown.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/BUSINESS/asia/01/23/china.piracy/index.html
(1) I wondered when I read this example in what sense the "absence of copyright laws" was discouraging the creation of new intellectual work. Do you think it is because individuals are disinclined to produce new works, or do you think it is because businesses do not find this economic environment favourable? My guess would be that if it is true that China is lagging behind other Asian countries in software development, and furthermore, if it is true that this lag can be attributed to intellectual property laws, then I think the lag is more likely due to the attitudes of business leaders rather than the authors or originators of new works.
(2) Unless the person was paid on a salary basis, in which case staying an extra hour at work wouldn't make any difference! There are a number of free tax programs which are available over the internet too, so I think people who don't want to spend $20 would probably consider these.
(3) But, wouldn't the person who say the information on the internet posted by the first person be rational? After all, he/she could get the program for free without even spending the time to circumvent the copy protection!
(4) I think this is a very good point. It seems to me that many people support an author's claim to his/her work, but are less sympathetic toward companies which make profit from an employee's work. In the shareware case, the consumers can reasonably believe that their registration fee is going directly to the author for the software, and therefore they are supporting the creative individuals directly. Perhaps what would change public opinion is a system in which there is a more direct link between authors and the people who enjoy the works produced by those authors.
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