Russia to legalize software piracy
I&#x27;m not opposed to this. I&#x27;m opposed to the West imposing its IP regime on the world. I&#x27;m supportive of Western copyrights, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets in the US and Western Europe. However, the concept of IP ownership -- let alone specifics of how its structured -- are a cultural and human construct.<p>Other countries should be free to figure out other ways of doing this.<p>Very little of this existed prior to around 1700. It&#x27;s a relatively recent construct too (although there are some historical parallels).<p>I&#x27;m not at all convinced we&#x27;ll make much progress as society if we impose our values on everyone, and expect everyone to behave the same way. There are fundamentals and externalities -- the war on Ukraine is wrong, and we should intervene. However, on something like having IP law, let alone breaking it up into copyrights&#x2F;patents&#x2F;trademarks, let alone stating durations and contexts of all of those, this just seems like overreach.<p>I feel like this is one of those places where corporate lobbyists managed to change people&#x27;s values in a way which is quite unfortunate. People learn about IP theft in elementary school, it gets integrated into UN human rights documents, and something which is really culturally-dependent is viewed as universal. It wasn&#x27;t viewed this way when I was a child.<p>Even little things make a big difference. We&#x27;ve gone from &quot;copyright infringement&quot; to words like stealing and theft. They&#x27;re fundamentally different concepts which were intentionally mixed up. If I steal from you, you no longer have what I&#x27;ve stolen. If I copy your software, you still have it; I might just have deprived you of profits (if I had otherwise bought the software).<p>I&#x27;m not arguing against the IP regime in the US&#x2F;EU, or for breaking IP laws. I&#x27;m just arguing we shouldn&#x27;t force our IP regime on everyone else.