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Comment by chillacy | Hacker News Reader

Recall that the US "stole" the inventions of britain during the industrial revolution:

https://www.techdirt.com/blog/innovation/articles/20130228/0...

Hollywood, one of the biggest defenders of IP today, is in california today so they could skirt Edison's patent royalties:

http://mentalfloss.com/article/51722/thomas-edison-drove-fil...

IP theft is how many industries in the united states rose to dominance... it's extremely hypocritical to cheat your way to success and then reprimand others for cheating. Of course there's the whole question of whether our system of IP is even reasonable in the first place.

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The U.S. (and the USSR, but not the U.K.) also stole literally every patent Germany held after WWII. Every - single - one.

> it's extremely hypocritical to cheat your way to success and then reprimand others for cheating.

Wouldn't this logic condemn all of US history [land theft, slavery, etc.]?

Note: I don't think it's wrong to do so I just wonder where you think it stops.

Indeed it does. Might often makes right, and contracts are only as good insofar as they can be enforced. Seen from that angle, IP law is just a tool that you use once you have IP and ignore until then.

Rather, I'd say that might makes. It doesn't make right, it just makes. Might makes right is just another version of a naturalistic fallacy, if i understand correctly. Therefore, people can still be held accountable for these things. Getting away with it doesn't make it right.

Fair enough, I suppose history will look down on these acts even if they have high payout.

So: "_____ is no big deal because _____ did it too."

How far should we take this....

- The Atlantic slave trade is no big deal because the Arabs did it too.

- Slavery in general is no big deal because Africans, Egyptians, Middle East Muslims, did it too.

- The Colonization of Africa is ok because the middle east Muslims, did it too.

- Making homosexuality illegal is ok because 30+ African countries did it too.

- Communism is ok because Cuba, North Korea, Germany, China, Vietnam, Bulgaria, USSR, etc... did it too.

- Rape and abuse of women is no big deal because, gosh everyone did it too.

So...what now, it's hypocritical of us to try to stop something bad from happening because a long time ago we did the same? Well then hell, lets just go back to the stone age. Screw law and civility.

I think you're oversimplifying. None of those things are actually a necessity to becoming an economic powerhouse.

Intellectual Property is a construct which exists to protect the creations of the incumbents, and more often than not, people get ahead by ignoring that construct until they have enough to suddenly care.

I'm merely pointing out that those with IP crying foul is the historical norm, and I'll extrapolate 30 years into the future when China has enough IP to complain about other industrializing countries "stealing" their inventions.

This is not some competition in morality. Nobody counts "moral superiority points". The only thing that is counted is money.

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