陳真
發佈日期: 2020.01.15
發佈時間:
下午 6:37
2009年5月,在一個訪談中:
https://chomsky.info/20090519/
Chomsky談到智慧財產權:
Imagineer: Moving on to another kind of piracy, one that is much more domestic: How do you believe the United States and other industrialized nations should handle intellectual property, with specific regards to online piracy and what is called illegal online downloading? If I go to my computer and download the latest U2 album “illegally”, is that justified?
Chomsky: Well, again, depending on how broadly we cast the net, in a very narrow sense I think a case can be made saying it’s illegal – here’s a creative artist who created a song and wants to survive, and he can’t survive if people just steal. So in a very narrow sense, yes [copyright laws are] justified. As a broader question, however, why do we have copyright laws? Is that the moral way or even the economically efficient way to support the creative arts? I don’t think so; there are better ways. For example, it should be, in a free democratic society, a sort of responsibility arrived at by democratic decision to maintain adequate support for creative arts as we do for science. If that were done, the artists wouldn’t need copyrights to survive. That’s economically more efficient, I believe, and morally more justified.
Download piracy on the internet is a very small part of the whole intellectual properties issue. The main aspect of it is the highly protectionist rules which are written into the World Trade Organization vastly beyond anything that preceded them, guaranteeing patent rights to major corporations like pharmaceutical corporations. Now, there’s a lot to say about that. If that patent regime had existed in the 18th and 19th centuries and even through the early 20th century, the United States and England would not be rich, developed countries. They developed substantially by what we now call piracy. So take, say, England, which goes back farther. A large part of English wealth which helped initiate the early Industrial Revolution was derived from straight piracy. Sir Francis Drake, who provided huge sums to England, was a pirate. He was robbing Spanish ships on the high seas. He became a great hero. He contributed substantially to English economic development. Now beyond that, England did not pioneer modern industrial technology. It stole a lot of it from Ireland. They had an advanced weaving industry, and England conquered and destroyed it. It stole a lot from India. When India was conquered, it had, by the standards of the day, an advanced economy. England imposed free market principles on India, but it itself had an extremely high protection to protect early British textile industry. It also took highly skilled technicians from the Low Countries – Belgium and the Netherlands – to England to teach them technology, and the US did the same. The US, as soon as it became an independent country, imposed extremely high tariffs – this was under Alexander Hamilton’s economic development program. It imposed very high tariffs to protect early American industry from superior British goods. It went through personal business textiles; then later it was steel, so Andrew Carnegie made the first billion dollar corporation. That went right up to the Second World War. Then, through the period of its major growth, the US was by far the most protectionist country. In fact, in many ways, it remains so, although it’s not called protectionism. A great deal of the advanced American economy, like in other countries but strikingly here, comes straight out of the state sector: computers, internet, information technology, and so on. A lot of it is a radical violation of free trade rules which we enforce on the poor.
To get back to the intellectual property rights, as I said, if those had been placed during the period of the growth of the contemporary rich countries, they wouldn’t have developed. Now we call it piracy, but then we called it development when it was for ourselves. There’s a name for this in economic history. It’s called “kicking away the ladder”. First you use certain bits of development, and then you kick away the ladder so others can’t follow you. That’s what’s called international economic policy in the World Trade Organization and so on. So, if there’s any justification for thatÉ again, it’s how broadly you cast the net. The pharmaceutical corporations, for example, insist that they need high protection in the World Trade Organization, because they need it for research and development. However, they are only responsible for a minority of their own research and development, and that part is largely more oriented toward the marketing end. A lot of risky work is done through public funds and foundations. In fact, it’s in a few estimates that if the research and development budgets of the pharmaceuticals were 100 percent taken over by the public, and the corporations were compelled to function in a market society to sell for market prices, the saving to consumers would just be colossal. But, they have enough power so that they can sustain that system, and there are a lot of other examples like it. So, as always, it depends on how broadly you cast the net, and how broadly you look at the issue. From a very narrow point of view, going back to your original question, you can say yes, the creative artist is being harmed. From a broader point of view, there are a lot of other things to say.
我簡單轉述一下,Chomsky 說,WTO 大張旗鼓保護所謂智財權,往往只是保護了大公司、大藥廠的利益。這樣一種專利體制如果出現在18、19或甚至20世紀初期,那麼,英國和美國都不可能成為富裕的已開發國家。西方國家恰恰就是依靠我們當今所說的 "海盜行為" 而獲得發展。
以英國來講,英國工業革命所需要的龐大資金,就是直接搶來的。對英國經濟發展貢獻很大的Francis Drake就是個海盜船船長,搶劫西班牙船隻,英國人卻歌頌他是大英雄。
還有,英國當時在現代工業技術上其實並不是領頭羊,許多技術就是從愛爾蘭偷來的;英國人征服它之後,就把它毀了。對印度也一樣。依照當時的標準,印度經濟開發程度相當高,但是,英國侵略印度之後,卻馬上偷走一大堆東西;並且在印度強迫他們實施所謂自由經濟市場,好加以掠奪,但英國自身卻實行極端的保護主義來保護英國的紡織工業。英國還從比利時及荷蘭搶走許多高科技人才。
英國如此,美國也一樣。在它們高度發展的時期,努力去搶別人的東西,但自己去採取極端的保護主義政策,一直到二戰,甚至到現在其實在許多方面都還是跟過去一模一樣的作法。他們強加許多所謂自由貿易的規則在窮國窮人身上,但他們自身卻往往完全不遵守規定。過去如此,至今依然。
現在的所謂智慧財產權,如果在當時就這麼做,西方國家根本不可能發展成富裕強國。現在他們說這是一種 "剽竊",可是在當年他們卻說這是一種 "發展"。只要對自己有利的,就高唱自由發展,只要對別人有利的,就說是偷竊。
Chomsky 還提到說經濟史上有個名詞叫做 "踢掉樓梯" (kicking away the ladder),簡單說就是林北搶到東西、佔盡一切優勢之後,就把樓梯踢開,讓別人無法跟著爬上來,喪失發展機會。
Chomsky當然不是說智財權完全是錯的,喜歡做溜滑梯推論的人腦袋要清楚點,想事情要細膩點。Chomsky說,智財權這些概念在多大程度上可以被合理化,得看你究竟網子要撒多大。意思是說,概念之合理性總是建立在 "某一種" 意義上,你得說清楚你的議論究竟是在哪一種意義上能夠成立或不成立,合理或不合理。
在許多場合,Chomsky其實經常講到這些問題,比方說大藥廠之高調宣稱比他人更嚴苛的智財產,其實很不合理,因為許多高風險研究實際上並不是由大藥廠進行,而是透過公共基金;大藥廠往往只是撿便宜,卻透過不合理的專利保護來謀取暴利。
Chomsky也經常幫中國仗義執言,他並不否認中國之脫貧與發展經常透過抄襲與模仿,但Chomsky說,西方哪個國家不是這樣成長的?而且他們過去所做的遠遠比當今中國所做的還要嚴重許多,甚至充滿暴力掠奪與血腥殺戮,但中國並非如此,卻反而遭到西方的一致圍堵與污名化。