The target here is China. They alone are responsible for the largest transfer of wealth the world has ever seen (Trillions $$ in IP theft from western tax payers). There is a great book called "Future Wars-Mark Goodman" that details some of this theft of technology that the Chinese Gov and their agents have carried out not just from the US but Europe also.
This is the contradiction. A reduction in revenue directly translates to a reduction in productive capacity.
I don't want to make it sound like I'm saying "why, this is simple, obvious to even the most casual of observers" -- what I'm saying is more that this is in line with the kind of decisions societies and individuals have to make all the time about what is and isn't acceptable.
I'm a fiction author myself, and I'm not against giving my work away for free! But I don't think it's unreasonable for me to think I should be the one to make the decision whether or not to do so -- and that means that, at some level, I need control over the "intellectual property" of my fiction. I don't think that having my work digitally available means I somehow automatically forfeit the right to that control that I would have had thirty years ago when you pretty much would have had to buy a physical copy on paper. What readers are ostensibly paying for, after all -- or what I'm giving away, if I choose -- isn't the medium, it's the work expressed in that medium.
And, you know, there are nuances and arguments to be made around that. There's a lot of things about IP law as it exists now I disagree with. But seriously making the argument that we can't let a book publisher enforce their copyright against a pirate ebook site because to do so will inexorably lead us to the Triangle Shirt Fire -- I'm just saying, I think that's a pretty damn hard case to make.
Try "wealth division", by the very act of more people having access to the rights the earnings from its exploitation are distributed.
If I own the patent to the screw, I make all the money from its sale and use. There isn't more money created if you steal it and sell the plans to a hundred thousand fabricators who compete for the same and further markets.
This is such a thieve's attitude, "what good is money sitting in this rich man's house unused, when I can create opportunities for all who I would spend it on?"
Support for SciHub is orthogonal to this, these academic papers don't exist yet. So not even the Arxiv would make sense, its not even a preprint, its work in progress thats being co-opted and used for gain within China.
If you could explain how this state of affairs, aka upending the academic publishing model entirely by undermining the entire idea and using unpublished research for your own gain in another country, that would be a constructive way of addressing the issue at hand. As the issue at hand isn't directly economic, but it will affect economics at some point as money is involved.
In terms of % of global GDP is it in fact greater than the transfer to the US of European technologies in the 18th and in particular 19th centuries (a famous IP theft being, for example, the spinning mill)? Or smuggled transplantation of crops between rival European empires (e.g. rubber from Brazil to to Malaya).
Not trying to defend or accuse anyone here; simply curious about the term "largest".
Welcome to the trade war.
> They alone are responsible for the largest transfer of wealth the world has ever seen (Trillions $$ in IP theft from western tax payers).
The largest transfer of wealth was either from china to europe/america ( opium wars ), colonialism in africa/india and the confiscation of land in the americas ( particularly the US ). If your assertion were true, china would be ruling the world and their economy would be bigger than US + EU combined. China's economy is only 1/3rd the size of US + EU while having 300 million more people. Not quite the largest of wealth transfers. Also, wealth transfers normally happen via war. Don't recall china winning a war recently.
Incidentally, would you consider someone getting paid 1/10th what an American worker would need to get paid, to make a widget, to be wealth transfer? In which direction? To me, it seems to be a wealth transfer from the person employed in the sweatshop, to the west. [1] We have been enjoying the benefits of this sort of wealth transfer for the past four decades. I must say, hundreds of millions of people giving you their labour for next to nothing, for decades, dwarfs whatever impact IP has in, ah, transferring wealth.
[1] For some odd reason, a large number of modern politicians think that it is a wealth transfer in the other direction. I'm not sure they understand, or appreciate the fact that people on the other side of the world are willing to work for us, nearly for free.
Edit: Cleaned up the language.
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
If you post that way, you'll evoke better from others, instead of worse.