Is stronger intellectual property protection linked to “premature deindustrialization”? A thought experiment

Posted on October 12, 2013 by bhaggart

Dani Rodrik has a fascinating chart up at his blog that’s got me thinking about the link between intellectual property and economic development, and that it might not be as straightforward as we’ve tended to think.

Typically, it’s been argued that economic growth and stronger intellectual property protection go hand in hand. As economies become more sophisticated, they move from benefiting from copying more advanced processes, etc., to wanting to protect their own processes. More economic development = stronger IP protection. And, of course, it’s assumed this is a good thing.

Looking at Rodrik’s chart (reproduced below), though, I wonder. It suggests that the returns to industrialization have been declining for a few decades now. As you can see, it notes the year in which the country’s manufacturing employment’s share of total employment hit its peak, charted against the GDP per capita at this peak.

While modern economies all seem to follow the same path of developing “first by industrializing, and then by moving into services,” Rodrik argues that “the onset of deindustrialization is now taking place much sooner, at lower levels of industrialization and lower incomes.” Economically, this is a problem because “it slows down growth and delays economic convergence. Politically, it forecloses the typical path to democracy – through the development of a labor movement, disciplined political parties, and habits of compromise and moderation arising out of industrial struggles over pay and working conditions.” So this is not a trivial issue.

Rodrik isn’t sure what’s behind what he calls “premature deindustrialization”; in a column he muses that global competition might be to blame for part, but not all, of it.

My hunch – and it’s only that at this point – is that the story has something to do with the fact that, thanks in part to ever-stronger global intellectual property laws, manufacturing doesn’t pay like it used to. Most of the $800 cost of a contract-free 64 GB iPhone, to take a purely hypothetical example, stays in the US, even though most of the actual assembly happens overseas, mainly in China. Because the large value-added categories have migrated away from manufacturing toward design and the like (protected by patents, copyrights and trademarks), we’d expect to see late-arriving countries hitting their industrialization peak at lower per capita incomes, and (maybe? I’m not sure of my logic here) at lower employment shares. It’s just not worth as much as it used to be.

If I’m right, then the more economic development = stronger IP protection link could continue to hold. However, it may also be the case that stronger IP protection may place a ceiling on industrialization and overall economic growth. In such a situation, I’m not sure that stronger IP protection would be an economically rational policy.

This might be a case where, when all you have is a hammer (IP-focused research, in my case) every problem looks like a nail. But it’s a fascinating question that’s worth investigating, in my opinion. What do you think?

Posted in economic development, intellectual property | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Is stronger intellectual property protection linked to “premature deindustrialization”? A thought experiment

Copyfight: The global politics of digital-copyright reform

Posted on June 8, 2013 by bhaggart

It’s the final day of Research Week here in the Orangespace and I thought we’d end it with an announcement.

I’ve been a big fan of the word “copyfight” ever since I heard Cory Doctorow (I think it was him) use it. It gets at the heart of what copyright politics is about. It’s rooted in economics and culture. Copyfight conversations are difficult because they involve thinking about sacred Western norms like the individual creator and private property, while also raising hackles because of how copyright violates other Western norms, like free speech and free markets.

(The good folks at the Copyfight blog — no relation — have a nice post on what “copyfight” means to them.)

Fuelled by money, power and ideology, the copyfight is politics in its purest form, which is why I’ve always found it a bit odd that more political scientists don’t study it. (Young scholars: come on in! The water’s fine.)

All this is to announce my upcoming book, Copyfight: The global politics of digital-copyright reform, to be published soonish (maybe early 2014) by University of Toronto Press. In it, I try to bring into focus the forces that shape global copyright politics at all levels, from developing countries to the international stage to the heart of the U.S. establishment that currently drives global copyright policy. I do so by telling the story of how Canada, Mexico and the United States  negotiated (along with other countries) and then implemented the 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization Internet Treaties, which to this day largely define what we mean by digital-copyright reform.

Or, as I wrote in the blurb that I’ve supplied to my fine publisher:

Copyfight is the first complete account of the increasingly contentious global politics of copyright policymaking. It offers a clear look at whether individuals around the world can shape a law that will affect creativity, freedom of speech and economic innovation in the 21st century.

You know what’s fun? Trying to summarize a 100,000-word book in 44 words.

I’ll probably make more announcements about the book as we get closer to its publication, but if you think this is something you might be interested in purchasing (I’m told that it will be priced quite fairly), send your email address to bhaggart at brocku dot ca and I’ll create some type of mailing list to let you know when it will be coming out, how to order it and all that jazz.

Posted in Canada copyright, DMCA, Mexican copyright, SOPA, U.S. copyright, Uncategorized, WIPO Internet treaties | 1 Comment

How vulnerable are intellectual-property provisions in trade agreements?

Posted on June 6, 2013 by bhaggart

Original Research Week continues here in the Orangespace. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about intellectual-property provisions in trade agreements. (As have a number of other people.) We’ve gotten to a point in the global economy where it almost doesn’t make sense to keep referring to things like the Canada-EU trade agreements as free-trade agreements (Journalists: Please stop doing this). Lowering trade barriers is an increasingly minor part of these agreements, given the fact that global tariff levels are at historic lows.

As my old professor Michael Hart – who’s a bit, shall we say, zealous on the issue of free-trade – taught me back in his trade policy class, intellectual property rules in trade agreements actually restrict trade. Free trade and IP are not, in other words, the best ideological (ideational?) fit. Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite, and Susan Sell, among others, have shown that this trade-IP linkage was politically constructed, as IP industry representatives successfully argued to U.S. government officials that stronger global IP protection would help stave off declining U.S. global economic dominance. Thus we have the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative’s concern about pursuing ever-stronger global IP protection.

All this got me to thinking about the conditions that would lead to the un-making of this political bargain, especially in light of rising public interest in copyright issues. I’ve written a paper about it, which I’m presenting tomorrow to the Canadian Political Science Association. In it, I argue that the involvement of the public and Internet-related firms, with their emphasis on the importance of diffusing, not protecting, information, has the potential to upset this nearly four decade-old trade-strong IP linkage. Quoth the abstract:

Though understudied in international political economy, copyright and intellectual property (IP) have become increasingly central to the appropriation of value in global production chains; stronger IP is the bedrock of U.S. attempts to maintain global economic dominance. As digital technologies have brought individuals and telecommunications companies into direct contact with copyright laws, copyright has been politicized, capable of sparking massive worldwide protests. While traditional copyright interests continue to seek ever-stronger copyright laws and international treaties in the name of stronger “property rights,” they are increasingly being countered by those promoting “user rights.” One of the most dramatic of these protests, the January 2012 “Internet blackout” in protest of two copyright bills, occurred in the United States, ironically the foremost state proponent of stronger copyright.

Copyright’s politicization offers a useful lens through which to consider the wider issue of global norm diffusion. Its politicization threatens not only the direction of future copyright laws and treaties, but also the structure of the global political economy. This paper considers the implications of copyright’s politicization by focusing on the most recent IP treaty, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Using historical institutionalism and analyzing the effects of copyright politicization in three key TPP countries, Canada, Mexico and the United States, it argues that the United States’ strong-copyright position will become increasingly untenable, as copyright politicization becomes increasingly ubiquitous. However, regulatory capture of key copyright and trade institutions by the copyright industries means that the trend toward stronger copyright may not reverse immediately.

In short, the dissemination side is winning the framing and public-opinion battles, while elites are becoming increasingly conflicted about whether copyright’s protection or dissemination roles should dominate.

This doesn’t mean that the U.S. government will wake up tomorrow and abandon their pro-stronger-IP position in the Trans Pacific Partnership talks (the paper’s ostensible focus). Institutions and the people in them change only gradually. But it does mean that the foundations of U.S. trade-IP policy are becoming increasingly vulnerable.

Anyway. This paper is a work in progress, so I’m sure there are several things that I’m missing or could explain better. I’m looking forward to getting feedback from the panel discussant and the audience tomorrow. And if anyone else would like to weigh in, please feel free to do so in the comments or via email at bhaggart at brocku dot ca.

Posted in CPSA paper, TPP | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on How vulnerable are intellectual-property provisions in trade agreements?

The Mexican Stop ACTA movement and the politicization of Mexican copyright (or, how I spent my winter vacation)

Posted on June 5, 2013 by bhaggart

I’m at the Congress of the Humanities and the Social Sciences in Victoria, British Columbia, all this week, so now is as good a time as any to actually highlight some of the things I’ve been working on for the past year.

In late February I went to Mexico to talk with several key individuals responsible for convincing the Mexican Senate to vote unanimously to reject the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement in mid-2011. It may have been overshadowed by the January 2012 SOPA protests and the February 2012 anti-ACTA European street protests, but I think it’s easily as remarkable as these two, especially given the context. The norm of Internet freedom originated (like the Internet itself) in the U.S., and there exist a large number of strong civil-society groups in the U.S. and in Europe. Not so in Mexico, where as a few of the people I spoke to mentioned, the lack of a strong institutional champion for the Internet is an ongoing concern.

Anyway, it’s a fascinating and important story, and one with lessons for the ongoing global copyright debate, particularly in developing countries. Anyone interested in copyright/intellectual property politics, online social movements should be trying to understand how a dozen individuals managed to politicize copyright and complicate (to say the least) the designs of the Mexican (and U.S.) governments. Thanks to everyone who agreed to talk with me. If I got anything wrong, let me know at the email address at the end of this post.

The paper is available here. Here’s the abstract:

The February 2012 mass protests in Europe against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) demonstrated an international increase in the political contentiousness of copyright policy. ACTA, a U.S.-led treaty among several developed countries, and Morocco and Mexico, would further strengthen international intellectual property (IP) laws, potentially negatively affecting human rights and freedom of expression.

Possibly as consequential was the Mexican Senate’s June 2011 rejection of the treaty. This not only signaled copyright’s politicization in Mexico, but also reversed the Senate’s previous pro-stronger-copyright position. As a major developing country with strong U.S. ties – the main proponent for stronger copyright – the Mexican copyright debate reveals much about the possible future of developing-country engagement on IP issues. This paper examines the factors that contributed to this rejection. It focuses particularly on the mobilization of Mexican civil society on copyright – a new development in Mexican copyright policymaking.

If you’d like to comment on the paper, which I plan to publish at some point, please feel free to make them in the comment section, or to email me at bhaggart at brocku dot ca. More to come throughout the week.

Posted in ACTA, Mexican copyright, online activism | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Mexican Stop ACTA movement and the politicization of Mexican copyright (or, how I spent my winter vacation)