Ernie : Take the case of China stealing plans for an American fighter jet. The crime is both ( 1 ) Intellectual property theft AND ( 2 ) espionage. It may not be espionage if the Chinese steal plans for new photovoltaic cells but it might well be exactly that if they walk off with a program that provides security for a nuclear plant or that controls a sensitive radar system. Rather than being unrelated I see these two areas of interest as over- lapping and often examples of both. Also related is perfectly legal Chinese government policy of de facto extortion to allow technology transfer such as when a US company is pressured to force it to sell highly technical inventions or systems as the price for access to the Chinese market --with no reciprocation. But about this particular part of the equation the Japanese have long played this game, maybe even better than the Chinese. That is, as I see it, various Asian countries, but led by China, are seeking to collect as much US know-how as possible, legally if it can be done, but illegally if it comes down to it. In the Cold War ( and apparently continuing today ) it was the Russians ( sometimes the East Germans ) who were up to such tricks. For that matter, this sort of thing has been going on since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Americans did it with early cotton mill technology, ripping off the British. Not that this was ethically justifiable at the time, but you can argue that at least it served noble aims since , after the early 1800s, there were two democracies with then-new technology , using their economic power for the greater good, not only for national good. Besides, the US used early examples of technology transfer for "educational" purposes. Once we learned how to do what the Brits were doing we taught ourselves the system and went on the create newer and better devices. These days, the Chinese have every opportunity to study in American universities and learn how to create their own technology. Or they can buy almost anything on the open market. What is their excuse for mass scale theft ? Yet is continues and in some areas has gotten worse. Much of this under sponsorship by Beijing. You are doubtless right that no way would sales of pirated US goods or programs translate 1 : 1 into revenue losses as if otherwise Asian consumers would buy the actual American product. Not unless ripoff US goods sold for $ 10 in Shanghai would also sell for ten bucks in Seattle rather than $ 50. The ripoffs sell because they are cheap and come more-or-less close in quality to the originals. But I rather doubt the conclusion that this effects only 3 % of sales. No way for me to know, or even to arrive at a reliable estimate, but I'd guess somewhere in the range of 10% - 25 % depending on the products in question. In any case the Reuters story, and others like it, is where I get my narrative from. I can easily grant some of your criticisms. However, I also feel that Reuters, etc, is / are basically right. I have no idea what your sources are. Billy ======================================= 4/3/2012 3:49:27 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
Hi Billy, On Apr 3, 2012, at 3:43 PM, [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) wrote: Here is the Reuters story. Even if you subtract, say 25%+ as exaggerated that still is a per annum cost to the USA of well over $ 30 billion. My argument is not that some of the costs of piracy effect the American market in a major way, it looks like, for the most part, that particular effect is second order --hundreds of millions for a given industry But for entertainment, to use that example, most revenue is foreign, if not across the board, in many areas. In other words, since most corporations are multinationals, the question is not whether the US market is pinched, it is, but how badly overseas sales have been hit. About that, the pinch is more along the lines of a wrecking ball as profits get clobbered. Great for Chinese Pirate Corp, but horrible for Disney or any other major US studio. Anyway, I am really surprised at your response. Apple itself hardly treats the problem as non-serious, and it spends millions fighting intellectual property theft. Sounds important to me. Intellectual Property Theft is vastly different than industrial espionage. IP theft is primarily a legal issue, whereas espionage is a preventive security issue. As usual, we appear to have been discussing two different (and in my view, unrelated) issues. :-/ Also, while I fully agree China and other Asian countries should outlaw piracy in practice (not just in theory), it is ridiculous to think that: - such measures would be 100% effective - every sale lost to piracy would magically convert to full-price revenue Even if enforcement was 100% successful, I would be pleasantly shocked if even 3% of former pirates ended up buying the legitimate product. -- Ernie P. Billy --------------------- China piracy cost U.S. firms $48 billion in 2009: report ( Reuters ) - Chinese piracy and counterfeiting of U.S software and a wide range of other intellectual property cost American businesses an estimated $48 billion in 2009, the U.S. International Trade Commission said in a report released on Wednesday. It also concluded 2.1 million jobs could be created in the United States if _China_ (http://www.reuters.com/places/china) complied with its current international obligations to protect and enforce intellectual property rights. The most direct jobs impact would come in high-tech and other innovative industries. The report, requested last year by top Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee, gives the Obama administration additional ammunition to press Beijing for better protections. More than $26 billion of the losses came from the information and service sector and more than $18 billion came from the high-tech and heavy manufacturing sector in addition to billions more from other sectors, the report said. "China's unfair practices cost the U.S. billions of dollars and millions of jobs," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus said in a statement as top U.S., Chinese and other Asia Pacific trade officials gathered in his home state of Montana for an annual meeting. "Time and time again, China has failed to protect and enforce American intellectual property rights, and it continues to discriminate unfairly against American businesses. We cannot pretend that there aren't real consequences to these violations when these numbers show that millions of American jobs are on the line," Baucus said. -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
