[throwaway98121]

Ha! I work with some talented engineers at a big tech company. This topic sort of came up at a happy hour event.

Their culture is different. In the west, we think you’re really something if you invent or innovate something on your own. Their view is it doesn’t matter if you take something from someone because you still have to work to do something with the concept or technology.

I get their perspective. On one hand, yeah it sucks if you work hard or invest massive capital to innovate in some area. On the other hand, if your economy is at an advantage, others in the emerging world are left behind and they’ll always be playing catch up, paying royalties, or locked out completely.

[chapium]

>it doesn’t matter if you take something from someone because you still have to work to do something with the concept or technology.

Thats a rather convenient rationalization for poor behavior.

[coldtea]

Well, the same can be said to "I invented it, it's mine" behavior. A rather convenient rationalization for poor behavior -- in favor of the profit of the inventor (and usually not even that, the patent holder, which can easily be a patent troll or a rent-seeker) -- rather than the society at large or those that can put the invention into practice.

It's as if it's a matter of worldview, rather than some fixed idea that this is good or this is bad. It's also as if their version is closer to the "information wants to be free", "down with patents" etc spirit.

(Not that their companies do it out of altruistic ideology. But for the spirit of the culture at large, that can be said, as it is more communal and less individualistic, e.g. see Confucianism).

Then there's the "We stole foreign IP by the truckloads when we didn't have many inventions of our own to bootstrap ourselves with, but now that we're the ones inventing stuff nobody should do it anymore" rationalization...

https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-too/

[claplouder]

It takes a lot of effort and risk to pick-pocket, so I guess it's ok if you do it by that logic.

[coldtea]

Not sure about that argument.

Isn't the "effort and risk" usually what those in favor of patents propose? Lest there's no compensation of the inventor for their effort, and we stop having inventions or something?

[chapium]

> Well, the same can be said to "I invented it, it's mine" behavior.

I completely agree.

However this doesn't make taking an idea and running wild with it acceptable either. There is some grey area here.

[solidsnack9000]

Yeah, if you steal wheat from the farmer you still have to work to mill it, make into dough, knead it, bake it in the oven...

[robomartin]

Or sell the wheat to someone else for less than market value because you don’t have to own land, equipment, hire people, learn to grow it, plant the seeds, look after the crop, deal with insects and other issues, manage regulatory requirements, pay property taxes, provide health insurance, carry liability and property insurance, deal with the losses during a bad season or failed experiments, have a financial buffer to deal with market fluctuations...and more.

Yeah, aside from that stealing something from someone who created it takes the same effort as that expended by the rightful owner.

[TeMPOraL]

Except this analogy doesn't make any sense, because what's "stolen" here is the IP. So it's not like stealing wheat from a farmer. It's like a farmer stumbling upon a plant useful for food production, calling it "wheat", figuring out how to plant and harvest it, and then demanding that he be the one who controls who can or can not grow or use this new "wheat" thing, and that he gets paid by all other farmers who grow it. And then someone else (the "thief") calls bullshit, and grows this "wheat" anyway.

Applying language for material items (like "stealing") to IP only muddies the waters. There's plenty of cases where one could find moral justification for compensating the "inventor" (e.g. countless of hours invested in try-and-error search, use of expensive equipment), and there's plenty more of cases where the purported "inventor" is just a greedy asshole trying to get rich by abusing the society (e.g. patent trolls, DMCA abuse, speculative patenting by companies and individuals alike). In times where IP frameworks are both misaligned with the nature of information, and frequently abused to prevent the very things they're ostensibly meant to promote, this whole space needs a total overhaul.

China's approach may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but taking a global view of technological development, it's probably for the better.

[solidsnack9000]

The issue here is that the addition of work later in the process, does not mean there is no work -- and thus no claim to value -- earlier in the process. It's a response to it doesn’t matter if you take something from someone because you still have to work to do something with the concept or technology.. Just because people have to work to make something saleable of the concept or technology, doesn't change anything.

You might argue that "finding" or "discovering" stuff is not work and in naive cases you are right. Regarding wheat, though:

* There is a lot of work that has gone into virtually all edible wheat varieties. We don't eat wild wheat.

* Finding stuff you can actually eat was at one time a lot of work, and sometimes dangerous.

* Saving seeds and saving the knowledge of identifying characteristics of food stuffs was at one time far more difficult than it is now.

If people do work, and we benefit from it, and they don't benefit from us benefitting, that's crooked.

[TeMPOraL]

I'm not arguing discovery is not work. I'm arguing about the limits on returns on discovery, because those need to be balanced with the rest of society.

In this particular example, from a more global point of view, it would be best if the farmer who discovered new food was incentivized to share the knowledge without restrictions, as widely as possible, because not doing so means lots of unnecessary people sick or dead.

> If people do work, and we benefit from it, and they don't benefit from us benefitting, that's crooked.

I agree, but there has to be diminishing returns on that benefit. Otherwise, each discovery is forever holding the civilization hostage. You can't run an economy based mostly on rewarding the estates of inventors for their past inventions. At some point the discovery has to be owned collectively, by everyone, and become a building block for next discoveries.

Current western IP systems sorta recognize that, at least in theory. In practice, we're dealing with a) protection periods not reflecting the reality of modern industries, and essentially putting a brake on progress; b) a system that's thoroughly gamed, and no longer serves the interests of society. Between ridiculous copyright extensions, vague patents, obvious patents, speculative patents, trolling, rights trading, MAD via patents, the system legitimizes rent seeking, and does not incentivize people to create/discover things in order for them to benefit the whole.

[kkarakk]

well to be sure - to add some details in your analogy for it to be an exact comparison, the farmer "stumbled" on this plant in someone else's nursery. a nursery that person nurtured for quite some time and expects to get a return on

[throwaway98121]

A lot of ideas at home are stolen in one fashion or another. We just happen to have a legal system that allows you to reap the benefits of your innovation alone or license out and get royalties or some combination of the two, assuming you’re the first to patent it or assuming you have enough political or financial capital to pursue litigation.

Imo calling it poor behavior is subjective. If your culture doesn’t value being the first to discover or invent something like the west, then any notion of it being poor behavior falls apart.

To be clear, I’m not defending the behavior. If my invention was stolen, I’d be upset. I am, however, presenting the other side the way it was explained to me.

[xupybd]

Intellectual property is a relatively new idea. In the past you had to keep something secret or others would copy your ideas.

[jdpedrie]

Rapid economic growth and massive technological advancement is also a relatively new thing. Wonder if that's coincidental?