I agree with your basic point, but I really hate this argument -- it's a "blame the victim" justification. Companies deserve to have their IP stolen because they aren't adapting to technology that makes it easier for IP to be stolen?
In other words, a company that is relying on policies implemented to stimulate economic growth and development a century ago--and is using the power of its protected market position to interfere in the democratic process that might align policy with the economic realities of today--is certainly not any kind of "victim". If there are any victims, they are the people whose true economic potential is being suppressed by the continuing existence of outdated laws.
I'm not advocating for an elimination of IP, but I am saying that IP needs to be reformed in a way that will reduce the wealth of companies and individuals who do cling to a pre-internet business model, and it is right to attack them to the extent that a defense of their interests is preventing a modernization of the laws.
Why not give the grants to businesses who are trying to protect their IP? Or to ones that are seeking to create IP and register it?
Supposedly, as the article states, this sort of capital allocation is supposed to forward the goal of promoting creativity.
But I'm not sure people will cease to be creative simply because others won't be prosecuted for alleged IP violations. But maybe they won't make as much money? Perhaps a clearer goal, instead of "protecting creativity", could be stated, such as "protecting revenue streams of businesses that produce and register IP (via fees paid to government)." As we've seen such businesses are not always the most creative. In many cases they are just the most prolific filers for IP registrations.
Creativity existed long before the legal fiction of intellectual property.
I've always been a strong supporter of blaming the victim, precisely because "blaming the victim" is such a popular code phrase which acts to short circuit the process of logical reasoning and leads to a systemic under-blaming of alleged victims even where their alleged victimization is attributable primarily to their own actions.
If there are known strategies to avoid being victimized and particular victims consciously or incompetently forgo them, and the predictable consequence follows, are we really supposed to feel sympathy for those whose own decisions put them where they are?
This goes triple when the alleged "victims" are multibillion dollar international corporations. No industry with enough money and power to buy their own laws can legitimately feel victimized when non-Congressperson-owning individuals violate the laws that they bought.
The reason that "blaming the victim" is so offensive in the rape case, and why that is always brought out as the poster child for "don't blame the victim," is that in the rape case it implies that wearing a revealing outfit is enough to excuse rape. Which is so clearly, unquestionably wrong that it makes a very emotionally powerful case for the logically unsupportable position that the victim's actions never matter for anything.
But "don't [ever] blame the victim" is bad reasoning. To make it correct you would have to qualify it with something like "don't blame the victim when the victim isn't to blame" -- and that's just a tautology that doesn't help you determine when the victim is to blame. The fact that we know for sure that the victim isn't to blame in certain cases (e.g. rape) doesn't help for other cases where it isn't so clear.
Given that not everyone is good, you'll find that "giving people (in general) a reason to buy" comes down to carrots for most and sticks for some. If you fail to get that balance right, your losses will drive you out of business.
Of course, society can't tolerate merchants who hunt down, attack, torture, maim, or kill transgressors. Nor can it tolerate the existence of crime syndicates that will handle this dirty work for a price (offered willingly or otherwise). So we've come to a pretty good arrangement where the labor involved in "giving people a reason to buy" gets divided between the private businessperson, who focuses on carrots like a more competitive product / service / price, and the State, which handles the stick.
Assuming that the State, in turn, remains generally accountable to the people, this arrangement works well. What doesn't work well is telling one group of producers "sorry bitches, but technology has changed and now you need to adapt" while glossing over the subtext that the "adaptation" you're referring to is the invention of a business model that's all carrots and no sticks. In a market where everyone else still gets the benefit of legal protection, this is both unique and unreasonable.
That doesn't mean IP businesses don't need to adapt at all, or that they should be given special consideration that retards the general progress of the arts and sciences. But how they do this depends largely on whether or not they receive legal support in situations where they are faced with jerks who refuse to pay.
That's not what he said. It's a matter of scale. Surely every company benefits from the government at some point. But some companies have their entire business model dependent on government aid. I'm not talking about having the government as a customer, mind you. I'm talking about companies that became monopolies only because their lobbyists convinced lawmakers to protect their businesses.
Don't be ridiculous. No American media company is, or is ever likely to become, a monopoly. What they depend on is a limited set of property rights in products they make or buy. That's very different from being a actual monopoly.
So ... you're saying none of us have the right to complain?
Coming from an ex-communist country, comments like yours that assume property/life/liberty must be somehow graciously "granted" by the big brother make me sad.
In the natural order, a predator who killed a prey loses it as soon as a bigger animal comes and takes it. Even before that, the prey who's been killed in the first place lost property on its carcass as soon as the first predator caught it. None of those had any "natural property right" on the carcass beyond its physical ability to secure it.
Property as we casually understand it (a right so effectively enforced that you can take it for granted, even if you don't have the personal means to defend it) is government-issued: it works because it's backed by the threat of government's violence, in the form of police then correction officers beating up most thieves into submission.
And there are ways to transfer property which are admitted as legitimate by the government; among those ways, some are bound to piss off some people. The definition of what kinds of transfers are legitimate is political, i.e. somewhat arbitrary.
So the concept of property not based on permanent mob violence does not predate governments.
I believe the GP simply meant that when you base your entire business on extortion (regardless of the group size perpetrating it, incl. governments), you shouldn't complain when another tentacle of the same machinery slaps you in the back.