Fortunately for many people, the US is not the only country.
Millions of companies survive and thrive without doing business in the US. At this time in history, we are used to thinking of the US as being a favorable business climate; relatively free of corruption with clear rules and low cost of business formation. It is clear that unless current trends are reversed that this will not remain the case.
If the governments of the countries of Northern Africa (Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Morocco) were to form a regional economic initiative that created those conditions from the Suez Canal to the Atlantic Coast and created a clean Intellectual Property regime with automatic licensing they would attract a decent share of global technology investment if they could make it stick.
Automatic licensing in this context being the rule that no one can deny another the use of an invention, but proven priority and disclosure grants an automatic share of the license collected out of the VAT or other tax on finished goods.
Automatic licensing sounds like a very interesting way to balance IP creator interests with IP consumer interests.
Extend the same principle to copyright: Hollywood can't refuse to sell me a movie just because I don't live in a certain geographical area, and RIAA can't deny YouTube users the right to cover and remix their music as long as a reasonable fee is collected by some other means, whether privately or via a public distribution scheme.
Perhaps the law should define a nominal amount per work that relieves the payer of all IP-related liability. The amount could depend on the type of work, and/or proportional to the profit generated, so that hobbyists who only copy stuff for personal use pay at the lowest bracket and people who make a lot of money out of other people's IP pay more, just like taxes.
Millions of companies survive and thrive without doing business in the US. At this time in history, we are used to thinking of the US as being a favorable business climate; relatively free of corruption with clear rules and low cost of business formation. It is clear that unless current trends are reversed that this will not remain the case.
If the governments of the countries of Northern Africa (Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and Morocco) were to form a regional economic initiative that created those conditions from the Suez Canal to the Atlantic Coast and created a clean Intellectual Property regime with automatic licensing they would attract a decent share of global technology investment if they could make it stick.
Automatic licensing in this context being the rule that no one can deny another the use of an invention, but proven priority and disclosure grants an automatic share of the license collected out of the VAT or other tax on finished goods.