Exactly right, and that's why this innovation popped up in Kazakhstan and not Cambridge, Massachusetts. There was a person who could have easily created SciHub in Boston and because of US judicial philosophies he is dead.
I think this is going to become a trend going forwards -- IP (broadly interpreted) is a crippling disadvantage, and it's an asymmetric disadvantage some countries levy on themselves, and some don't. I predict that we're going to be continuously blindsinded by this -- by crazy-useful tech inventions thought up by clever people, not in the USA but in the developing world, in part because of the stifling effects of IP (and in part because genius doesn't follow national borders, and software needs no industrial base).
Yep. Licenses, too. Being able to just pirate tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars (per seat, per year!) in ECAD, MCAD, cutting edge design and simulation software, and being able to do it in the open, sharing tips and tricks... being effectively exempt from US IP & copyright is a big advantage for small companies in the hardware space. I, too predict a wave of innovation that happens outside the US sphere of influence on account of shooting ourselves in the foot like this.
One thing about the rejection of IP that I don’t think they have taken far enough is IP theft. Sure some places have cleaned up their act relative to when China was able to steal so much IP but based on the places that have been victims of ransomware, IP theft seems like it still is relatively easy.
Especially with the current heat on the ransomware groups, it seems a great time for them to be taken under the wing of the various countries they operate under and used for more economically useful tasks.
I think this is going to become a trend going forwards -- IP (broadly interpreted) is a crippling disadvantage, and it's an asymmetric disadvantage some countries levy on themselves, and some don't. I predict that we're going to be continuously blindsinded by this -- by crazy-useful tech inventions thought up by clever people, not in the USA but in the developing world, in part because of the stifling effects of IP (and in part because genius doesn't follow national borders, and software needs no industrial base).