
No Copyright Law: The Real Reason for Germany's Industrial Expansion? (2010) - dredmorbius
https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-law-the-real-reason-for-germany-s-industrial-expansion-a-710976.html
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bediger4000
This episode of history should be part of every discussion about "intellectual
property", since it's an obvious counterexample to the prevailing "nobody will
create anything new without a life+75 years monopoly" narrative. But it's not.
Why not?

I can think of a couple of reasons. First, "intellectual property" really
isn't about getting creation of new ideas paid for. It's about gatekeeping and
control, part of freezing or fixin society as it stands today, with current
winners continuing to win, and current losers continuing to lose. That's
consistent with low social mobility, low real wage increases, low physical
mobility, dragnet surveillance. Second, "intellectual property" isn't about
increasing the public domain (eventually) it's a method for making it illegal
to not pay certain influential corporations money.

