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Can you explain the moral relevance of that distinction - the reason one kind of theft of intellectual property is morally less bad than the other. One idea is

Can you explain the moral relevance of that distinction - the reason one kind of theft of intellectual property is morally less bad than the other. One idea is this: stealing trade secret is "active theft" whereas stealing copyright is "passive theft". You do not need to leave your house in order to steal someone's copyright. By contrast, to steal closely guarded trade secrets you practically must conduct espionage. So this form of theft reminds us more of real world robbery. We are apt to consider the victim physically violated (by comparison, the idea that by downloading some pdfs from libgen while sitting at home in bathrobes we've 'physically violated' Springer obviously sounds very odd) If that's the response then my reply is twofold. First, just because something is more 'graphical' doesn't mean it's morally worse. For example, many omnivores tend to consider people who eat dogs and cats to be especially evil. On reflection, they realize that they have no principled basis for judging themselves to be morally superior to the dog- and cat-eaters. The only reason their initially reacted as they did was because they found the imagery of eating dogs and cats much more graphical, since dogs and cats are such cute animals. But cuteness is not (as most people would agree) a morally relevant difference. It's also worth pointing out that stealing trade secret is more graphical than stealing copyright only because of contingent technological reasons. If we lived before xerox machines, stealing books may require making efforts not that different from physical robbery. Second, I want to point out that you haven't really responded to the substance of my point. My point was that perhaps the Chinese is unconcerned about their 'theft of intellectual property (trade secret)' for the same reason many Americans are unconcerned about their 'theft of intellectual property (copyright)': because "it's not theft to steal something from those who aren't entitled to it". Simply pointing to the distinction between 'trade secret' and 'copyright' is not yet pointing to a distinction that makes an obvious difference. If the point is simply "stealing trade secret is obviously much worse than stealing copyright, because trade secrets are closely guarded, so you need to basically pry them away from the victim", then (i) see my first reply above and (ii) note that the two acts of theft I stated in my original post, because they involve literal acts of physical violence, is obviously much more 'graphical' than any industrial espionage.

Dylan16807 8y ago
> Can you explain the moral relevance of that distinction - the reason one kind of theft of intellectual property is morally less bad than the other. Two different crimes don't have to be strictly better or worse to get different reactions. But scale and profit are big factors here. Anyway, I don't think it's active vs. passive at all. Your original point (i) was much better. The person asking for money didn't make the science, and isn't using that money to fund more science. The Chinese "IP theft" is copying from someone that made it, is using it, and isn't interested in selling it. It's a violation of privacy, not just "IP". > "it's not theft to steal something from those aren't entitled to it" What's 'it' here, exactly? It can't be payment, because there's no price in the first place. But it's hard to argue that someone that developed a tech isn't entitled to the tech... If 'it' is exclusivity, that's a valid worldview, but it doesn't quite address the issue of using fraudulent means to get access. They're such very different actions that I don't see any point in bundling them together. But if you do insist on bundling, then you need to address how a pirate is making a personal copy, and a company copying tech is on a completely different level. > note that the two acts of theft I stated in my original post I have noted them. They are bad. I'm with the other responder in ignoring any attempts at whataboutism, so this note is irrelevant to anything else in the post. (Also china's performing extremely similar crimes, so it's a weird tack to use those as some kind of hypothetical comparison.)
- scarcely 8y ago
  (i) Imagine a billionaire who acquired his fortune from pyramid schemes. One day he fell victim to someone else's scam and is left penniless. He goes to confront the scammer to demand his money back. The scammer admits to carrying out the scam, but points out to the former billionaire that the money stolen from him was stolen in the first place. "That's just whataboutism," the former billionaire protests indignantly, "just because I did something bad in the past doesn't give you the right to do bad things to me". Do you see the problem with the former billionaire's response? (ii) To describe trade secrets as "science" sounds incorrect (I would reserve the term for the kind of stuff published in science journals, that genuinely tries to push the boundaries of human knowledge). (iii) The kind of trade secret you are referring to are much more like source codes for proprietary software. You are sold some device that does a certain job. However, how exactly it does this job, is kept from your knowledge, because if you know it you would be able to make copies of it yourself, which would hurt the bottom line of the party selling the device. A more homespun example is KFC's recipe for their fried chicken. If the secret recipe is known, people would be able to make their KFC-flavor fried chicken at home. They wouldn't need to visit KFC to get it. (iv) once we see that the "trade secrets" alluded to are things like closed source software's source code, and KFC's secret recipe, one thing that should immediately come to mind is the entire free software movement, the most prominent spokesman of which has repeatedly argued that proprietary software is "evil". Is it really okay to sell things that is promised to do a certain job but how it does that job is not being revealed? Would we ever allow drug manufacturers to sell drugs that promise to cure some condition via undisclosed mechanism? How do we know the closed source software isn't spying on us? Etc. (v) Moreover, it becomes obvious at this point, that the only difference between the libgen type of cases and the "trade secret" cases is the difference in how easy it is to make copies. If you have a physical book or an ebook or an mp3, it's trivially easy to make an identical copy. But if you have a piece of KFC fried chicken in front of you, that in itself is of no help if you want a second helping. You can't just xerox the fried chicken, you need the recipe. And if the recipe is being locked away in some secret cabinet and you absolutely need it, then you need to steal it. But then this seems to suggest that those who pirate books have little basis on which to claim moral superiority to those who steal recipes/source codes. At the end of the day, they are both making unauthorized copies. The only difference is that the pirares are much more fortunate in that they have a much easier time making copies than the thieves stealing trade secrets. But is that a morally significant difference? How can it be that crime A is morally less bad than crime B simply because A is easier to commit?

Dylan16807 8y ago

> Can you explain the moral relevance of that distinction - the reason one kind of theft of intellectual property is morally less bad than the other. Two different crimes don't have to be strictly better or worse to get different reactions. But scale and profit are big factors here. Anyway, I don't think it's active vs. passive at all. Your original point (i) was much better. The person asking for money didn't make the science, and isn't using that money to fund more science. The Chinese "IP theft" is copying from someone that made it, is using it, and isn't interested in selling it. It's a violation of privacy, not just "IP". > "it's not theft to steal something from those aren't entitled to it" What's 'it' here, exactly? It can't be payment, because there's no price in the first place. But it's hard to argue that someone that developed a tech isn't entitled to the tech... If 'it' is exclusivity, that's a valid worldview, but it doesn't quite address the issue of using fraudulent means to get access. They're such very different actions that I don't see any point in bundling them together. But if you do insist on bundling, then you need to address how a pirate is making a personal copy, and a company copying tech is on a completely different level. > note that the two acts of theft I stated in my original post I have noted them. They are bad. I'm with the other responder in ignoring any attempts at whataboutism, so this note is irrelevant to anything else in the post. (Also china's performing extremely similar crimes, so it's a weird tack to use those as some kind of hypothetical comparison.)

scarcely 8y ago
(i) Imagine a billionaire who acquired his fortune from pyramid schemes. One day he fell victim to someone else's scam and is left penniless. He goes to confront the scammer to demand his money back. The scammer admits to carrying out the scam, but points out to the former billionaire that the money stolen from him was stolen in the first place. "That's just whataboutism," the former billionaire protests indignantly, "just because I did something bad in the past doesn't give you the right to do bad things to me". Do you see the problem with the former billionaire's response? (ii) To describe trade secrets as "science" sounds incorrect (I would reserve the term for the kind of stuff published in science journals, that genuinely tries to push the boundaries of human knowledge). (iii) The kind of trade secret you are referring to are much more like source codes for proprietary software. You are sold some device that does a certain job. However, how exactly it does this job, is kept from your knowledge, because if you know it you would be able to make copies of it yourself, which would hurt the bottom line of the party selling the device. A more homespun example is KFC's recipe for their fried chicken. If the secret recipe is known, people would be able to make their KFC-flavor fried chicken at home. They wouldn't need to visit KFC to get it. (iv) once we see that the "trade secrets" alluded to are things like closed source software's source code, and KFC's secret recipe, one thing that should immediately come to mind is the entire free software movement, the most prominent spokesman of which has repeatedly argued that proprietary software is "evil". Is it really okay to sell things that is promised to do a certain job but how it does that job is not being revealed? Would we ever allow drug manufacturers to sell drugs that promise to cure some condition via undisclosed mechanism? How do we know the closed source software isn't spying on us? Etc. (v) Moreover, it becomes obvious at this point, that the only difference between the libgen type of cases and the "trade secret" cases is the difference in how easy it is to make copies. If you have a physical book or an ebook or an mp3, it's trivially easy to make an identical copy. But if you have a piece of KFC fried chicken in front of you, that in itself is of no help if you want a second helping. You can't just xerox the fried chicken, you need the recipe. And if the recipe is being locked away in some secret cabinet and you absolutely need it, then you need to steal it. But then this seems to suggest that those who pirate books have little basis on which to claim moral superiority to those who steal recipes/source codes. At the end of the day, they are both making unauthorized copies. The only difference is that the pirares are much more fortunate in that they have a much easier time making copies than the thieves stealing trade secrets. But is that a morally significant difference? How can it be that crime A is morally less bad than crime B simply because A is easier to commit?