Intellectual Property rights

Now this post will be exactly as boring as it sounds..(it's rather long too)

However it's actually a pretty interesting issue. I first approached this in an economics class as a research project, but I found there was very little literature on the subject by economists. Most of it was not very well modeled or it was prety clealy ideological stuff without much research behind it. Now this may have reflected the poor quality of economic journals and research available at Carleton, or it may reflect the fact that a lot of economists assume by definition that property rights are an essential part of capitalism.

Now I remain to be completely convinced on the subject. Despite reading (most of) Hernan de Soto's thte mystery of capitalism, I remain sceptical that IPRs (intellectual property rights, if you haven't figured that one out already) are beneficial. One of my favorite authors, John Ralston Saul mocks the attempt to capture information that is one way of describing IPRs.

I used to think that i was in favour of abolishing intellectual property rights and in many wasy I still am, but I can also see the other side of the issue. I would never ever go as far as those at the Fraser Institute in vancouver who advocate individual(or corporate) ownership of absolutely everything including air and water etc.

Intellectual property rights are essentially an amalgam of different types of property rights. They include copyright, patents as well elements of industrial design protection. The rules on these products have been increasingly tightened over the last decade or so, to the point where they are included in the trade provisions of the WTO.

There has been a lot of talk about copyright protection in the digital age. I see the entire debate framed in terms of power and who has the right to control content. This is one the unlooked at issue when we talk about property rights. Like most questions in the modern economy, the issues do not hinge simply on economics, but are questions about power relations.

Copyright is a fair example of this. Copyrights are designed to ensure that artists get paid for their work. If an author rights a book, you cannot go around and copy it without getting a license or paying a fee to the author for the right to reproduce that material. If a recording artist makes a CD you cannot go around and distribute it for free. There already exists a fee collected by the government on purchases of blank CDs and tapes to give something back to artists whose work may be copied. However the law does not apply strictly there are some provisions for fair use. It's not as if the next time I lend someone a book i'll go to jail for it.

I was thinking about this topic because I saw Carleton's access agreement on copyright while making photocopies for a course at the university. Now Carleton as an academic institution is governed by rules about photocopying. When it makes coursepacks for students, there are very strict rules about the amount of material allowed froma single source as well the school pays a royalty fee in order to use the material. Now I think this seems to be a reasonable thing to do. Many professors use many sources and to imagine that they do not have to pay for it is a bit of a stretch even for one who doesn't approve of strict copyright laws.

However many students are against it because it raises the cost of their books.

With the recording industry's campaign for more stringent copyright laws in Canada, and its attempts to sue people in the US, it is defending the status quo model, which makes record companies lots of money, a few artists more or less rich, but leaves control largely in industry hands. Luckily the supreme court has found more or less that downloading music is legal. I don't see any lawsuits coming in Canada yet anyways.

The issue is whether the companies can get legal protection for thier existing business model. they are trying to prevent a new model which provides more risk for those companies while allowing for much more of a voice for independent music.

The final area where intellectual property is, I think, hardets to defend is when it comes to science. Scientists have for a long time relied on a model in which open debate and publication are essential to the advance of a wel regarded solid body of knowledge. The entire scientific method in which hypotheses are carried out with the intention that they be replicated to prove their strength is being undermined by a reliance on intellectual property rights. If a scientist produced some knowledge which may be useful these days it is immediately protected under some kind of intllectual property right. Universities have become hubs of such practices. Even if they use public money to fund the research, the benefits will be entirely private.

Not only does this mean that the sharing of knowledge which is such an integral part of scientific pratice is undermined, but it also means that research itself is undermined. We need more people researching the same problems to come up with a solution. If each group engaged in this research is unable to share its results with others it means a lot of wasted effort on dead ends, or perhaps breakthroughs take much longer to diffuse among the researchers.

The pharmaceutical companies are the most guilty of the practice of using intellectual property rights to defend their interests. Now they make the claim that they need the available rewards (ie protection) in order to invest the large sums required to develop new drugs. Now there is some merit to this argument. However the truth is that large parts of research that help to develop drugs come from the public sector. These companies also spend much more money on marketing than they do on R&D. If they need more money for R&D they can surely take it from the billions they spend convincing us that we are sick.

There is also the clear need for exceptions to these rules in face of a health crisis, the pandemic of AIDS in Africa in particular. These companies have fought tooth and nail any attempts to give lower cots drugs to these countries.

One last comment is that the way that most countries in the worlds have developed has been through the use of the one advantage thye have lower cost labour to start manufacturing goods and then moving up the value chain. This is what the US did, Japan and Korea did, and most countries that have been able to develop. IPRs have largely destroyed the possibility of other countries following in the footsteps of those who have led the way. It is hypocritical for a country like the US to talk about the need for patents to be protected, when its entire bookpublishing industry was built on the basis of ignoring copyright protection on british books. The US was one of the last countries to develop a more comprehensive IPR regime.

Alas this is still agenda is pushed by the strongest. Those who are at the top need protection against those who are weak. It seems that in an age where information is currency, it needs to be protected against those who would erode its value.

I'm still up in the air a bit, but mostly I just don't see how to develop an alternative set of incentives. I hope we can get there some day, when sharing isn't seen as a crime.