Russia to legalize software piracy
I'm not opposed to this. I'm opposed to the West imposing its IP regime on the world. I'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's a relatively recent construct too (although there are some historical parallels).<p>I'm not at all convinced we'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/patents/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'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't viewed this way when I was a child.<p>Even little things make a big difference. We've gone from "copyright infringement" to words like stealing and theft. They're fundamentally different concepts which were intentionally mixed up. If I steal from you, you no longer have what I'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'm not arguing against the IP regime in the US/EU, or for breaking IP laws. I'm just arguing we shouldn't force our IP regime on everyone else.