3 ms·

How? I'd love to see an actual example. Everyone is stealing IPs, enforcement is pretty hard.

• TaylorAlexander 7y ago
  You’re asking how intellectual property law keeps information from spreading? I feel like that is self evident. But also I forget if it was the world bank or the IMF but the US and other wealthy nations have made it a requirement that countries adopt our intellectual property laws if they want to receive benefits from the (IMF or World Bank, I forget). So we enforce intellectual property law here which prevents lower cost clones from being made and also prevents industry from investing more in reverse engineering. The monopoly on ideas raises costs compared to a market with clones, and poorer communities and countries suffer with IP versus an alternative world with more abundant cheap clones. Some would say the innovation would not have occurred without IP law in the first place, which obviously in some cases is true (certain business models require the monopoly on ideas to exist). However I think it’s absurd to suggest that there would be no incentive to innovate in a world with no IP law, and the damage done by IP law is too great to ignore. As someone who believes we have a moral responsibility to help people less privileged than us, I see it as grotesque that we lock up information that could help feed hungry people all over the world.