All-In Podcast Concern over China and IP “Theft”

From my Tweet:

I’ve really come to like the @theallinpod podcast, with @chamath, @jason,  @davidsacks, and @friedberg. In a recent episode, however (https://overcast.fm/+AAYlhlXNXk8), there is confusion about IP and China. At about 1:00:45, Friedberg starts talking about 3 of his concerns about protectionist tariffs– but the worst, for him (at 1:05:15) is he is “most worried about” — is China just ignoring IP rights (patents and copyright, I assume?) of Americans or foreigners and then, I guess, “take” American IP rights and, I guess, use it to make copies and sell it “all around the world”.

This is very confused. First, it is not true, Calacanis implies, that China doesn’t respect IP rights now. Sure, they don’t do a “great job” of it, but no one does since it’s impossible to stop all piracy. Even the US can’t, with with its insane IP laws. Just as the US drug war doesn’t stop drugs; we can’t even stop them in prisons. It’s impossible to prevent copying (not “theft!” https://c4sif.org/2012/01/stop-calling-patent-and-copyright-property-stop-calling-copying-theft-and-piracy/…) in any system since it is a unnatural and immoral law. The fact that China doens’t stop it as well as the US does doesn’t mean they have no IP system. They do, do all other countries. (https://c4sif.org/wrongaboutip/#ip-socialist-ussr…)

Trade secret theft is widespread both in the US and in China, but that has nothing to do with patent or copyright. That is because China requires companies to partner with local firms to get a license to operate, and in any case you have to use Chinese employees and they will leak secrets. (https://c4sif.org/2023/08/more-of-the-china-is-stealing-our-ip-nonsense/…; https://c4sif.org/?s=china+stealing+ip+trade+secrets…) That’s not “china” doing that, it’s in the nature of trying to rely on proprietary info, that can be leaked, as part of your value proposition. But even if China were to abolish its own copyright law or patent law, or stop enforcing it–first, that is their right. It is a local property right and no country has an obligation to protect IP rights internally–except that the US has bullied them into agreeing to provide minimum standards with a web of IP treaties (https://c4sif.org/2010/11/the-mountain-of-ip-legislation/…), a type of IP Imperialism (https://c4sif.org/tag/ip-imperialism/…). But China is free to stop enforcing IP law internally and this is not “taking” or “stealing” anyone’s “IP rights” at all—no foreign company has IP rights in China except insofar as domestic (“municipal”) Chinese law enforces it: that is, the Chinese state decides to issue patents and copyrights enforceable in Chinese courts.

But other countries do have robust IP (patent and copyright) protections built into their own municipal laws (partly because of IP bullying and treaties mentioned above) and so China could not just sell a device or software for $5 in some other country, say European countries, because that would still infringe the patent and copyrights held by American and western firms in those countries, where the consumer markets are.

So of all the problems with tariffs, trade wars, protectionism, Friedberg is alarmed about the only one that is not a problem, because he, like everyone else, buys into the myth that IP is good and that copying and competing is “stealing.”