Piracy and Fraud Propelled the US Industrial Revolution | Hacker News Reader

Piracy and Fraud Propelled the US Industrial Revolution

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71 pointsnikcub23 comments

I don't think it has ever been disputed that piracy helps the pirates, as is confirmed by this article. I think most of the debate has centered around whether it helps society as a whole. In some ways the patent system discourages the industrial espionage described here by enforcing protection in return for disclosure, but could also be interpreted as the haves suppressing the have nots.

I believe there is not debate at all that not respecting patents helps societies that have not developed technology as a whole.

If it not were for USA importing machinery and not respecting foreign "IP", USA would be a de facto colony of foreign nations.

They will only be able to sell raw source materials very cheap, and will have to import very expensive machines, while being dominated by war with industrialized countries.

E.g. Why the US today invades Irak or Afganistan to get cheap goods, like oil?, because those countries don't have industry on their own to defend itself from the drones, tanks or missiles of the invader. They could only use light weapons against cameras, satellites and aircraft carriers.

Yep. That's the point people criticizing piracy in less developed countries tend to overlook - without piracy the current difference between a few innovative countries and everybody else will be only growing. You cannot catch up after such a big delay without breaking the rules (rules set by the countries that are leading, btw, and have no business in helping their possible competitors).

Internet, piracy, and complete disregard towards patents is what makes developing countries possible. Otherways we would only have developed countries and their economical colonies.

The problem is that US want keep less developed countries as de facto colonies, the same way UK tried to keep US as a colony. I am pretty sure that patents are good for the American Society, but not for the poor countries... On top of this US tries to convince with Propaganda that patents are "rights" or "property", while in truth they are artificial monopolies only possible through strong state regulation.

I don't believe patents and copyrights help even the US. They help a very select few that have the means and skills to use the system. The average person, and even the average creator loses out.

Creativity for artistic purposes (or for matters of conviction) seems to have thrived since well before the concept of IP; and while the kind of content that's produced now is different (e.g. huge mass-market films), I don't believe it's intrinsically better or better enough to impose such restrictions on everyone. So the argument would have to be carried based on the more mundane practical benefits - useful devices people actually have that they would not otherwise have had, say.

But here too it seems that such laws strongly favor the creation of monopolies or oligopolies and don't favor long-term positive developments (e.g. apple, microsoft, google). I.e. it's mostly a weapon to prevent competition, not an incentive to promote the useful arts. Hence we get these long periods of stagnation between disruptive new businesses - the existing oligopolists are naturally very good at keeping out newcomers that they need to be disruptive to actually have a chance. That's not a good thing; it's a signal that there's not enough competition and development normally.

It's well known that small, vocal interests are very effective at getting what they want; so it shouldn't come as a surprise for the balance to have shifted to the overall detriment of society and in favor of rent-seekers.

I think of it as a kind of like distorting farming subsidies + tariffs. It's hard to get rid of em without hurting somebody, but that doesn't mean they're not doing harm.

> The problem is that US want keep less developed countries as de facto colonies,

I don't see how this is a problem for the U.S. The U.S. should, and indeed arguably has a moral obligation, to push for policies that benefit its citizens.

> On top of this US tries to convince with Propaganda that patents are "rights" or "property", while in truth they are artificial monopolies only possible through strong state regulation.

This is no more or less true than for any kind of property right. Without strong state regulation, the only "property right" you have is to whatever you can physically defend. I'd imagine most people posting here would not be in the same place in the overall hierarchy in such a world...

You see no qualitative difference between holding an apple in your hand versus an idea in your mind?

“Borrow,” of course, really meant “steal,” since there was certainly no intention of giving the inventions back.

No, it did not mean "steal." They were not depriving the inventors of their creations, but using the ideas. What would it even mean to give the inventions back?

Thomas Jefferson put it this way: If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea.... He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper [candle] at mine, receives light without darkening me. http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12....

There is also an interesting presentation of the author of the book reviewed. It has some more detailed information on the book market in Great Britain and Germany in 18th Century in regard to copyright.

Conclusion: "Copyright […] harmed the average author."

http://www.scribd.com/doc/46966863/Copyright-and-structure-o...

happened between east and west coast too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Patents_Company

This article seems like an excerpt/promo for the author's new book, which seems to be an interesting read,

http://www.amazon.com/Smuggler-Nation-Illicit-Trade-America/...

and has garnered a few favourable reviews so far.

P.S: Is there a way to provide inline URL linking in HN threads that I am not aware of?

Nope. People usually just do something like this [1] for multiple urls [2].

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/Smuggler-Nation-Illicit-Trade-America/...

[2]: http://news.ycombinator.com/

Thanks. It's what I also do. Wondering if there was a better way. Seems not. :-)

The full, non-mobile, nicely formatted version is here -

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-01/piracy-and-fraud-pr...

We already know the whole world is a creepy demagogue joke, do we? I find this article interesting, but extremely unsurprising.

The history is interesting, but the author's attempt--in the first two sentences--to frame the whole thing as an instance of hypocrisy strikes me as flimsy. If you're trying to invalidate an argument, you can't rest your case on the observation that someone is saying "do as I say, not as I did". It doesn't work when you're a teenager arguing with your parents and it doesn't work when there's such a gleaming and contemporaneous counter-example sitting just a few degrees South of your present attention.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States

If you're trying to invalidate an argument, you can't rest your case on the observation that someone is saying "do as I say, not as I did".

What argument is the author trying to invalidate here? It simply points these things out which are commonly glossed over, with no conclusions drawn from them that I can see. Pointing out hypocrisy is perfectly fine and no fallacy in itself?

I would say there is no hypocrisy, since the people of the industrial revolution are long dead. Being born in the same nation 200 years later doesn't make you bound by the opinions of your ancestors.

Likewise, the germans of today should not be considered evil Nazis, even though some of the original Nazis are still alive.

That doesn't answer my question as to what argument is supposedly attempted to be invalidated by pointing out hipocrisy.

But to answer anyway: being born into the same nation doesn't have as much to do with it as inheriting, as person, as corporation, or even as nation, the fortune/power accumulated, by means which are then made forbidden to others. It's not about any random American citizen, so pointing out the fact that "they aren't all hypocrites" is a strawman; nobody ever claimed they are.

That doesn't answer my question as to what argument is supposedly attempted to be invalidated by pointing out hipocrisy.

The article refers to "...the U.S. government’s message to China and other nations today...". I understood the author to be saying that said message is wrong.

I admit that it wasn't stated outright[1], but I don't think I was misunderstanding the author to read his opening the article by contrasting history with the present policy as a criticism of that policy -- that the implication is that it's wrong for someone to say to do something other than what they did. If you look at the comments here, I think it's evident that a many people agree with that criticism and share that view. I was only pointing out that within the article, that point is poorly argued. It's just sort of taken for granted that "do as I say, not as I did" is obviously wrong.

I'm saying that it's not inherently wrong, and--appropriate to the author's discussion of US cotton manufacture in the 1700-1800s--citing slavery as an example of something where "do as I say, not as I did" is entirely righteous.

[1] For all I know, the lede could have been tacked on by an editor to make an timely article out of a book excerpt, but that doesn't make it any more right.

Yes, the reader is asked to simply accept the author's interpretation that "proper provision and due pains" means "breaking the laws of other countries", and then "At least part of the "Report on Manufactures" can therefore be read as a manifesto calling for state-sponsored theft and smuggling.". This non-sequitur is then the basis of the following arguments. Just enough facts to make it taste right, so the rest one swallows without question. Is our history pure and virtuous?...of course not. But to say that China today is the equivalent of the very, very young U.S. at the time of the Industrial revolution is quite a stretch, to me.

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