No Copyright Law: The Real Reason for Germany's Industrial Expansion?

[sysop]

Did Germany experience rapid industrial expansion in the 19th century due to an absence of copyright law? A German historian argues that the massive proliferation of books, and thus knowledge, laid the foundation for the country's industrial might.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...710976,00.html

[Norberto_Tyr]

Never choose an spiritual guide that asks you for money; therefore, truly educational books must be free, but of course, there are cooking books, porno books, empty books, just consider the humongous amount of paper and ink wasted by Marx just to trick people into believing that he had a an idea: ‘please give ME your money so WE can spend it much more wisely’. These kinds of books, surely, must be sold, otherwise is an utter waste of time, paper, trees and ink.

In fact it is a fair trade, we exchange painted paper mostly in black and white with painted paper wisely depicting green faces of Lincoln, Washington and so.

Fortunately, there are true Masters, like Schopenhauer, who wrote less than ten books in his entire life.

You cannot be thankful enough for his unselfishness; even if you do not understand a word of what Schopenhauer meant, you have to really say: ‘thank you for sparing my precious time !’.

Take for instance the impertinent Doctor Professor Sigmund Freud; after reading volumes and volumes of trash, you realize two things: 1- the argument is circular ‘petitio principi’; and 2- it has been ‘inspired’ by five paragraphs of Schopenhauer.

Now, Doctor Professor Sigmund Freud, Achtung !

How much money have you made badly plagiarizing Schopenhauer in New York, the Big Apple ?

To be honest, I was a bit disappointed when I finished reading Schopenhauer entire opera (but an essay in the nature of light I could not find) and my complaint was about ethics, I found very little about that, then, I realized, Shopenhauer says in many occasions, and when he repeats something is because it needs to be repeated, ‘I do not want to repeat what others have perfectly said’ (from memory), and I realized that the topic, Ethics, was exhausted by Baltasar Gracian in “El Criticon”.

Even though I am an amateur philosopher, I love embarrassing university professors (probably that was the reason I was failed in few occasions when I was studying electronic engineering and also in the most simple and useless subject of my MBA. I found that university professors have a very bad sense of humor, but not my fellow students though, one of them warned me when we were urinating during one of the breaks: ‘I’ve enjoyed the Mike Myer’s joke, but be careful !’), when they ‘lecture’ about Schopenhauer I often ask: ‘did you read Gracian ?”, ‘Gracian, Gracian, who is he ?’, then I realize that they do not understand a bit of Schopenhauer.

For this reason, when a philosophy professor told me: ‘leave Schopenhauer in peace, he is obsolete, go for the revamped version, Nietzche’, I’ve retorted: ‘I do much prefer listening Strauss writing philosophy !’.

Well, regressing to the real topic of this comment, please forgive the digression, I hope you enjoyed this game as I did, and IT IS FOR FREE !

Norberto

[PaulStatt]

Eckhard Höffner's work is available on Amazon--in two volumes, priced at €68 each. I wish I could but a cheaper smaller version. Which may prove his point.

[manneken]

Originally Posted by sysop

Did Germany experience rapid industrial expansion in the 19th century due to an absence of copyright law? A German historian argues that the massive proliferation of books, and thus knowledge, laid the foundation for the country's industrial might.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...710976,00.html

It is an interesting point of view.

IPRs are supposed to help innovation. The monopolies they grant are not a purpose onto itself, but are aimed at promoting and protecting innovation.

To the extent they provide over-protection, they risk reducing or stifling innovation.

It is interesting that the debate is starting on where we should draw the line.

So far, advocates of IPR are too religious in their position that "more protection = more innovation". QED, I would answer.

[BTraven]

Originally Posted by PaulStatt

Eckhard Höffner's work is available on Amazon--in two volumes, priced at €68 each. I wish I could but a cheaper smaller version. Which may prove his point.

It’s just a marketing trick. In order to confirm his theses expressed in his book he could either give the book away or sell it quite expensively. He decided for the later. Perhaps he will earn a lot of money but it must be depressing to know that the price of his much praised books prevents Germans from getting smarter.

[munchenboar]

An odd argument, that the non existence of a copyright law (a global experience, so open to all countries) should have given Germany a specific advantage.

Normally, credit is given the the absence of war in Germany after Napoleon, the iron, coal and other industries that the nascent state was able to exploit, its education policy (radically different from that of England).

England and France both had global empires to manage, a massive drain on resources (throughout the 19th century, Germany sought an empire and was one of the reasons for the wars of 1870 and 1914). The lack of infrastructure, meant that Germany could build and miss a generation, rather like installing 3G phone systems without 1G.

What about education? France and Germany both adopted a policy of mass education and enfranchisement, the UK system specifically limited education to the needs of the business sector, thus looking at the present, not the future and the welfare, education and social policies of German were 10 to 20 years ahead of those of the UK (voting, pension, education, child labor etc), thus giving the citizens a more fundamental responsibility within the state.

Was this work sponsored by those looking to increase the copyright protection laws? Odd argument in itself, it has been a long time since I read anything that attempted to apportion events to a single cause.

regards

[dingodog]

It is impossible to test such an hypothesis just by looking at one historic example - there are too many influencing parameters to find out if the lack or ineffectiveness of copyright laws (and, by extension, patent laws) is good or bad for an economy. But the Asian countries, especially China, where copyright and patent protection stand only on paper, seem to be a good proof that a developing economy is better off without them.

I just checked about German patent laws - it seems Werner von Siemens played a strong role in introducing them in 1877. No wonder - they protected his company from competition. Similar today - the strongest proponents of copyright and patent laws are the companies that profit most from competitors being blocked. Best example is the pharmaceutic industry, living off "innovations" which are created with a minimum of real research and a maximum of marketing.

As it becomes more and more difficult do suppress "open source" and creative commons developments in the future, I wonder if a new Gruenderzeit, boom time, might be coming soon, after the current financial crises have run their course. In China, at least, that boom time has been running for the last 10 or more years.

[cowbutt]

Interesting, and not without precedent. Whilst the United States was a young country, it flouted international copyrights. One could argue that a significant factor of China's current success is its less-than-slavish adherence to Intellectual Property rights standards.