
No Copyright Law: The Real Reason for Germany’s Industrial Expansion? (2010) - gballan
http://m.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-law-the-real-reason-for-germany-s-industrial-expansion-a-710976.html
======
littlestymaar
I had no idea about the situation in Germany, but it's a well-known fact that
the current power of the Swiss chemical and pharmaceutical industry comes from
the lack of patents law in Switzerland during the late 19th century[1]: a few
French chemists moved to Switzerland to circumvent the French patents.

A well-known example is Alexander Clavel who, in 1859, founded Ciba AG, a
silk-dyeing business using a French patent with no license. Ciba later became
Ciba-Geigy, which later became Novartis. One of the biggest pharma corp in the
world today.

Source: Swiss National Museum, Zurich.

[1] : Patents were only introduced in the Swiss law in 1907.

~~~
dnomad
The same is true of China, the US, and Germany. The idea that developing
countries can get rich through free trade is a myth [1]. Developing countries
that embraced free trade (see Africa, South America) largely remain poor today
while countries that embraced protectionism (see Asia) are much wealthier. The
basic fact here is that industrial societies need to be bootstrapped by a
strong, active government (who can defend native industries and provide
financing in the form of fiat currency) and rampant copying by those native
industries (who have no legacy investments and can jump straight to best-of-
breed practices and the latest technologies). None of this is a new idea: it
was all laid out by Friedrich List almost 200 years ago. Unfortunately the
basic idea, despite the mountains of empirical evidence, fell to the onslaught
of "free trade" propaganda.

What's interesting is that the same basic dynamic likely applies to even
highly developed economics. The tariffs are likely just the beginning. We will
see even Western countries abandon "free trade" and strong, active states
taking firm control of the economy in order to drive growth. The key words
that will define the economic future will be "political economy."

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/07/magazine/the-rise-of-
chin...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/07/magazine/the-rise-of-china-and-
the-fall-of-the-free-trade-myth.html)

~~~
tormeh
>Developing countries that embraced free trade (see Africa, South America)
largely remain poor today while countries that embraced protectionism (see
Asia) are much wealthier

The assumption that South America and Africa are pro free trade is not true.
Indeed, most of the countries with the highest tariffs are in Africa.

[https://www.tutor2u.net/economics/blog/which-countries-
have-...](https://www.tutor2u.net/economics/blog/which-countries-have-the-
lowest-import-tariffs)

------
skookumchuck
Curiously, we see a similar situation today with open source software. The
free nature of it would seem to stifle creation of top quality open source
software, but the reverse seems to be true. The open source business is
thriving.

~~~
throwawayjava
_> Curiously, we see a similar situation today with open source software_

I strongly disagree. Here are four notable counter-examples:

1\. Desktop Linux. I'm a religious Linux desktop user, but MacOS is definitely
a better operating system.

2\. Office suites. Libreoffice/OpenOffice/whatever-we're-supposed-to-call-it-
these-days is stuck in the 1990s.

3\. Videogames.

4\. Large web services (Google Search, GMail, Facebook).

Notice that four these examples, where closed-source software outshines OSS in
quality, cover 90+% of most people's computer time...

Open source software seems to do especially well mostly when the end-user of
the software product is a programmer/software engineer/IT type.

~~~
mrob
How is LibreOffice being stuck in the 1990s a problem? MS Office was
essentially feature-complete by Office 95, and LibreOffice does everything
Office 95 does. It seems all the major changes since then (Clippy, Adaptive
Menus, Ribbon Menus) have no value to experienced users.

~~~
veddox
LibreOffice is a pain if you want to do anything that looks remotely
attractive. MS Office, unfortunately, wins hands down at that (and at general
usability and power).

Being unable to use MS Office was one of my big regrets of working on Linux
for a long time. When I finally learnt LaTeX, that at least removed the need
for Word ;-) (Although I still miss PowerPoint, LO Impress really doesn't
impress me very much at all.)

~~~
JanisL
I find that remarkjs
([https://github.com/gnab/remark](https://github.com/gnab/remark)) has removed
a big class of situations where I previously needed PowerPoint.

~~~
IshKebab
And has the advantage that videos actually work reliably.

~~~
JanisL
This is an important point and a really big advantage as I've painfully found
out over the years when videos have not worked as intended.

------
pimmen
The debate around copyright today is just so weird I think;

"I should be able to prevent anyone from producing anything too similar
throughout my entire life, and my heirs should be able to stop them for
another lifetime after I'm gone."

"Why?"

"Because the money they make is money I could've made."

"So, make another work that you can monetize?"

"But why would I work if I have to work?"

I can understand copyright to a degree, but the lengths we've agreed to in the
West is absolutely ridiculous and ripe for abuse by companies that are built
on aggregating IP.

~~~
mickronome
Agreed, and I also think this investment/lottery/entitlement mindset is toxic
because it devalues the actual work.

Human progress, our progress, comes from the work being done, not the money
that can be made from it.

While money also end up funding other work, it's blindingly clear through the
distribution of money and the proliferation of various speculation markets,
that actually doing work to earn money is almost seen as 'earning' it in a
roundabout way.

All you really need to do if you have real money, is to do nothing at all.
Because while you can earn even more by doing something, even absolutely safe
positions will get you a higher lifetime income increase than the average
worker can expect over their lifetime.

It's simple math that shows _how_ extremely we've devalued work, and I believe
it has a negative effect on lots of things, some that might even too obvious
to be visible at all.

~~~
throwaway2048
see also the financialization of the economy, where money chasing money is far
far more valuble than building actual real things, in the real world.

------
philipps
Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang’s book “Kicking Away the Ladder” describes
how loose IP regulation has been at the center of the economic development of
many countries. Sadly, once countries have developed to a certain level they
tend to implement stronger IP to protect their position against other
countries.

[http://www.paecon.net/PAEtexts/Chang1.htm](http://www.paecon.net/PAEtexts/Chang1.htm)

------
cocacola1
Isn't it the same case for the United States in the 19th century? There were
copyright laws protecting the states, but these didn't extend internationally,
so books and other material could be brought stateside and be disseminated or
published without punishment.

~~~
tzs
International works were not protected by copyright in the US, but it didn't
really matter because of how long it took for copiers to get their copies on
the market.

The vast majority of books made most of their sales shortly after publication.
By the time the copier could get a copy of the published book, typeset their
edition, and go into production almost everyone who wanted the book had bought
a copy from the original publisher.

Stephen Breyer, back when he was a law professor at Harvard rather than a
Supreme Court Justice, wrote an article in the Harvard Law Review called "The
Uneasy Case for Copyright" exploring the idea that because of the limitations
of copying technology much of earlier copyright law really didn't do much.

It's an interesting argument, but technological advances in copying have made
it largely inapplicable for the present day.

~~~
bhaak
Charles Dickens did disagree with this view:
[https://creativelawcenter.com/dickens-american-
copyright/](https://creativelawcenter.com/dickens-american-copyright/)

But there are of course two sides to this story. Pirated editions back then as
today increase the popularity of the artists, often more than their agency
could do.

Unsurprisingly, even in the 19th century they came to a similar solution like
our current music industry (minus the unsuccessful DRM part). You can't pirate
live performances: "When he returned in 1867, he had mastered a way to
generate alternative income streams based on his celebrity status. He
performed readings of his work to packed houses and collected the receipts
from the door."

~~~
veddox
> Pirated editions back then as today increase the popularity of the artists,
> often more than their agency could do.

Could work the other way too, though. Alexander von Humboldt had troubles with
one of his books because a pirated translation into English was completed
before the authorised version. Unfortunately, the pirated translation was so
shoddy the book got really bad reviews in England...

------
cleansy
The historian claims that the missing copyright is "the real reason" for
industrial expansion. I think it's "only" a contributing factor. Germany was
divided in many smaller states and every state had their own universities.
Many of these states were competing with each other about talent. So instead
of centralising everything they had a distributed scholary culture. That's
probably why there was a culture of "thinkers and readers". EDIT: Hence why a
copyright law was not really enforcable. So the root cause was the division
and competition, the missing law just a symptom of it IMHO.

Plus: lot's of iron and coal easily accessible and many big commercially
usable rivers for transportation.

------
b0rsuk
Suppose we even abolished all patents. Would it even make a difference in the
software world? The selfish already got their new tool - online services. Not
only you never have to release any source code, the user doesn't even run the
compiled version himself. All he gets is output. The code running his
computations may or may not be patented, he'll never know. I don't think
licences like Aferro GPL can realistically be enforced.

~~~
jokoon
I think patents are relevant when you do chemistry or biology research.

If you burn money for years designing a molecule, you could say you "own" the
molecule, so you patent it.

The problem with the patent system is that it's necessary in a world where you
need money to do any simple thing, because states cannot fund every research
project, since it's impossible to know the outcome of every research.

But obviously you cannot patent everything, and that's where the patent system
is failing. There is no good legal definition of a worthwhile invention.

Software is not patent-able because it never really is an invention that
requires to burn a lot of money, unlike other domains of research. Anybody can
write any kind of software.

But patents are still relevant where research requires expensive resources.

~~~
dmos62
The original idea with patents was that they should make it worthwhile to
invest in innovation and otherwise expire as fast as possible so that
eventually all profit. Our current patent system has forgotten that second
part and morphed to "expire as late as possible", which only serves greed.

------
pitchups
The fashion industry is another example of an area that has thrived because of
a lack of copyrights, as argued is this TED talk :

 _" Copyright law's grip on film, music and software barely touches the
fashion industry ... and fashion benefits in both innovation and sales, says
Johanna Blakley. In her talk, she talks about what all creative industries can
learn from fashion's free culture.."_

[https://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashi...](https://www.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion_s_free_culture)

------
vackosar
To me copyright has a lot of similarity to GDPR. I posted about that now
actually:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17330914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17330914)

~~~
Maarten88
In an abstract sense, you may be right.

In practice, authors sign away the ownership to a publisher in a profit
sharing deal and it ends up protecting the publishers profit.

Makes me wonder of there is a business model for protecting user data, by
managing any user-business data relation/permission and hunting down any
company who is inappropriately using data from any member and collecting the
fines. That would be the first protection racket that I'd like...

------
lnrdgmz
> The German proliferation of knowledge created a curious situation that
> hardly anyone is likely to have noticed at the time. Sigismund Hermbstädt,
> for example, a chemistry and pharmacy professor in Berlin, who has long
> since disappeared into the oblivion of history, earned more royalties for
> his "Principles of Leather Tanning" published in 1806 than British author
> Mary Shelley did for her horror novel "Frankenstein," which is still famous
> today.

In the absence of copyrights, and with plagiarism being rampant (as the
article claims) how could authors command favorable royalty agreements? Could
a rival publisher not just print the same book, sans royalty agreement, and
undercut the original publisher?

~~~
incompatible
The printers would have been able to sell fresh material, and perhaps the
payments to the authors were insignificant if the volume was high enough.
Competitors would also have had to replicate the work of typesetting and
printing, which would take a while.

------
maxxxxx
I remember reading that the strength of manufacturing in China is also that
everything gets copied and innovation spreads quickly.

~~~
sonnyblarney
Process innovation and best practices is not generally something that gets IP
protection.

AS for the article: The richest countries have strong IP protections,
generally, that might indicate something.

Certainly creative trademarks, brands etc. - I don't like Disney but I think
they have the right to protect Mickey Mouse so long as they are a viable
entity/business.

Drugs ... this is one place where innovation might come to a halt of things
could not be protected. I'm aware Unis do a lot of key research, but bringing
something to market is _hugely_ expensive.

Also remember a lot of patents are defensive in nature - their only purposes
is to prevent trolls. So that's a sad artifact of it all.

No doubt the system needs an overhaul.

~~~
sachdevap
"The richest countries have strong IP protections, generally, that might
indicate something."

The assumption here seems to be that their riches come from IP protections. It
could be argued that the IP protections are a result of lobbying from rich
companies.

I am not arguing that the causation is wrong, but the implied claim does not
follow from the observation.

~~~
gridaphobe
Or it could be the causation is correct, but for a rather unsavory reason, the
wealth came from economic rents due to IP protections. The argument that IP
defenders need to make is that these innovations _could not have happened_
without strong IP protections, and I’ve never seen a compelling argument for
this.

------
trhway
Case in point - US aviation being backwater until Rights patent expired while
the rest of the world saw explosive innovation in aviation.

Patents were necessary only when public disclosure had value. In the world
where the same things get developed almost simultaneously by different people
at different places and anything can be quickly reverse engineered the public
gets no value in return for granting monopoly through a patent.

------
vinceguidry
What I really liked about it is how it forces publishing companies to truly
make knowledge available for everyone. It's the direction music is going in
this country, where individual listens are essentially a free public resource
for anyone who pays a minuscule subscription fee.

Books and movies seem to be retaining pricing power for some reason. I feel
like the ultimate reason behind this is that books and movies take a lot more
time and attention to consume.

I know for me, I would be _far_ more inclined to read and watch more of them
if it were easier to break them up into chunks. Give me a specialized movie
player that lets me pause and start movies by scene, make _individual_ books
and movies super cheap, sure, I don't mind paying cable-like fees for
something actually _useful_ and I'd watch movies a scene at a time by the
dozen. Give me a feed reader that mixes in book chapters, in order, with my
normal news feed.

Essentially, I don't want to waste time on crappy platforms. Just give me the
damn content in a way that makes sense for me to use it. I may get to the
point where my appetite for information is so voracious, I'll just mass pirate
stuff and upload it all into a personal database so I can chunk it myself.

~~~
BlackMonday
> What I really liked about it is how it forces publishing companies to truly
> make knowledge available for everyone.

I haven't read the article yet, but wow will that interact with:
[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/eus-copyright-
proposal...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/eus-copyright-proposal-
extremely-bad-news-everyone-even-especially-wikipedia) [0]

[0]
[https://act1.openmedia.org/savethelink](https://act1.openmedia.org/savethelink)

------
veddox
Interesting point about publishers producing a cheap and a "classy" version of
their books already way back then. I seem to remember reading somewhere else
that when paperbacks first came up, they were a huge success, yet were
criticized by the more snobbish educated elite as a virtual blasphemy...

~~~
digi_owl
Tolkien at least had that attitude towards LOTR being printed in paperback in
USA in the 60s (never mind that the publisher did so on questionable legal
grounds).

~~~
walshemj
This was to compete with the pirated editions - its mentioned in the forward
of my UK edition.

------
pimmen
If there’s one argument against copyright I would bring up it’s patent trolls.
If you can propose an IP law to me that makes sure creative individuals are
not bullied and stifled by unscrupulous people hungry for a quick buck I would
be more inclined to support copyright laws.

------
walshemj
And the unification, industrial revolutions, Bismark and all those wars had
nothing to do with it - seems a very narrow view of 19th century German
history

~~~
veddox
I see the article more as pointing out one aspect that is often ignored - not
as invalidating all those other aspects.

------
profalseidol
Wonder what kinds of software we have now if we didn't have Copyright Law for
source code too?

------
neilwilson
There is no justification for copyrights and patents any more than there is
for any other monopoly.

However if we get rid of them there is a need to socialise creative production
so that artists of all shapes and hues in all creative fields can still afford
to live simply doing what they love to do.

It's a fair trade. Producers can copy and extend whatever any human has
created but in return they have to produce enough to look after them.

~~~
colechristensen
>Producers can copy and extend whatever any human has created but in return
they have to produce enough to look after them.

Which is just a royalty with extra steps.

The problem with most attempts to subvert a capitalist/market economy is that
they all only manage to obfuscate the usage of money and ownership and replace
a lot of it with centralized control.

Your idea still requires ownership of IP and compensation for it.

------
branchless
Rentier activity, as usual, inhibits growth.

------
erikb
What means no copyright law? Of course we have laws about it.

~~~
manveru
> Did Germany experience rapid industrial expansion in the 19th century due to
> an absence of copyright law?

That's the very first sentence...

~~~
erikb
Ah and 2010 is in the 19th century? I guess I was never good in math.

~~~
diffeomorphism
That is the standard way to write that the article was published in 2010.

------
mnm1
> Authors are only motivated to write, runs the conventional belief, if they
> know their rights will be protected.

This is absurd. How stupid does one have to be to think this? Copyright serves
only one purpose: to make profits for the author and, more importantly, to
make profits for the publisher and distributor by exploiting the author's
work. These days it almost exclusively does the latter. Copyright is not about
contributing to or advancing society. It has nothing to do with that
regardless of the original intentions behind it. Copyright is about making
money for a few individuals or groups at the expense of the wider society. The
sooner the idiotic conventional thinking quoted above is replaced by a proper
analysis, the closer we are to fixing this atrocious system that's holding us
back.

~~~
my_first_acct
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." \--Samuel Johnson

[http://www.samueljohnson.com/writing.html](http://www.samueljohnson.com/writing.html)

