What? Nixon tapes? I did not even want to see the ones by Paris Hilton...

 

This is all funded by Spielberg and concocted by evil mastermind Michael Bay. First he makes you hate bootylicious Megan Fox. Then he turns your childhood heroes into knuckleheads. Then you hate Has/Tak and spend more money on their evil funded 3rd party companies.

 

Like I said, I'm no expert, but don't think it's quite so simple. I know that in Canada, people are able to download movies and what not, no problem. Companies in the US can't touch them unless they can prove that they've been uploading them, too.

Is China a signatory to any such agreement?

I don't know - I mean just look at Korea. So many major companies there started out by just reverse engineering electronics and what not from companies in Japan and elsewhere. Heck, Samsung's doing it right now with the iPad, if you believe Apple...

 

TO be fair, reverse engineering is kinda like research. They don't have anything inheritly wrong as long as you change it a little and publish.

 

That's why I prefaced with 'in theory'.   IP law is...convoluted and archaic and, quite frankly, in some ways disturbing. Hell, even lawyers specializing in IP law are confused about some parts of it. It's...very much messed up.

Reverse engineering is one of those aspects that is in an 'odd zone'.

IP law is screwed up, especially when you put it on an international level.

 

No doubt about that!

 

I detest the very idea of Intellectual Property. Owning real, tangible things and places I can understand. But owning an idea... That assumes some amount of mind control, which isn't too far off from the truth, now that I think about it.

"Oh, this is too similar to something else! You can't do it!"

"But it's just a black, purple and yellow transforming bug! It's an original character!"

"Hasbro owns the IP for all transforming black, purple and yellow bugs! Can't do it!"

"Ok..."

 

That would be the case if IP law actually protected ideas, which it does not.

There are three major classes of IP protection (there are many other minor types, but are far more specialized and beyond the scope of a forum post); copyright, patents and trademarks.

Copyright specifically protects the expression of an idea, not the idea itself.

Trademarks are marks used to denote the origin of a product and all associated meaning.

Patents are the closest to protecting an idea, but are both heavily technical, highly specific (slightly divergent ideas will generally bypass breach of patents) and time limited (patent rights expire much sooner than other forms of IP rights). And once the patent expires, the former owner looses all exclusivity to it, allowing anyone access to the patent, and permission to copy it.

There's no such thing as international copyright law. Each separate jurisdiction enforces it's own copyright law. For copyright to vest in a country, the work must be published in that country. Publishing a work in one country doesn't create a copyright in another country.

That said, many countries are party to various international agreements, where they might recognize publishing in the country of origin sufficient for copyright to vest in their own country as well, or at the very least, agree to standardize their copyright laws. However, that is beyond the scope of copyright itself, and is more a matter of treaties and trade agreements.