A story in Asia Times reports on a study by the US Justice Department about unregulated copying of electronic entertainment.
This is called "goods piracy" and "international theft and counterfeiting." It is estimated at $500 billion per year: that's 7% of all international trade.* The US manages to stop only about 0.2% of it--$100 million or so--at our border.
This is relevant to nanotechnology because cheap general-purpose nanotech manufacturing will extend this issue to physical goods. Today, it's only the high-priced brands that are worth counterfeiting; but when a computer can be manufactured for $0.10, it will be very hard for any regulation to enforce a price of $100. It could probably only be done by denying nanofactories to everyone. But that can only work for a few years; after that, the only thing that could prevent independent development is a worldwide crackdown on all advanced technology--which seems unlikely and would be devastating if attempted. Unless a new moneymaking model is developed and adopted, corporations that supply goods are going to find themselves out on a limb.
The article lists several reasons for lack of success in stopping unregulated copies. For example, there are about a dozen agencies responsible for it, and they get in turf battles. Also, according to Loren Yeager, the GAO's director of international affairs and trade, foreign countries "lack the political will to enforce anti-piracy laws because doing so might hurt their economic interests"; Yeager also mentions the price difference between legal and unregulated goods.
Additional barriers to enforcement are created by weak international agreements; for example, the US Senate has not ratified the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime or the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime, and "most Asian governments have reacted coolly to the suggestion that they allow pre-shipment cargo checks as part of counter-terrorism efforts, with only Singapore, Japan and Thailand buckling to diplomatic pressure."
* I suspect that the figures of loss are exaggerated. For example, they assume that any illicit sale represents a lost legal sale. The last paragraph of the article quotes a diplomat: "Can you image the impact of having 200 million Chinese households with high-speed Internet downloading from audio file-sharing sites?" Well, that assumes that those Chinese households have enough money to buy CDs at full price--several day's wages. The idea that the value of every transaction is the price you wish you could set is fundamentally broken--but pervades industry calculations.
Chris Phoenix
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