Fashion Designers Realizing New Fashion Copyright Would Cause Serious Harm To Business
from the waking-up dept
For many, many years, we've pointed out how the fashion industry is an example of a highly creative industry that has thrived without the use of copyright. The industry itself is massively successful, incredibly innovative, and involves plenty of competition. This should be seen as a good thing. Yet, some big name designers, who were annoyed that they had to keep competing by releasing new designs all the time have been lobbying Congress to pass a new law that would institute a special copyright for fashion design. This makes little sense. The entire purpose of copyright is to encourage innovation. Yet, if the industry is thriving, competitive and innovative, why would you ever want to introduce new copyright?Yet, as expected, there has been a big push to get the law passed this year. People have been submitting stories on a near weekly basis about how one or another celebrity designer trekked up to Capitol Hill to push starstruck Congress Critters to support the bill.
It's reached the point that many expect the bill to finally pass this year, but suddenly many in the industry are realizing what a disaster this would be. Boing Boing points us to a plea from industry insiders who are realizing how such a law would destroy the industry and force many small businesses and designers to shut down. Yet, when they talked to their Congressional reps, they were told that Congress hadn't heard anyone complain about this yet, so now they're trying to get out the word.
It might help them to present some of the economic research on this, including the studies that have shown how much the lack of copyright has helped the industry to thrive, and how much harm the addition of copyright would do to the overall industry. This research has been out there for years, but apparently the folks writing the laws would rather hang out with celebrities like Tim Gunn than actually do some research around what such a law would really mean for the industry.
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Filed Under: copyright, fashion, fashion designers, protectionism
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You forget the important second part:
"the entire purpose of copyright is to discourage duplication".
If nobody duplicates, what is the issue?
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Look at the history of fashion. Everyone 'steals' from each other. Are skirts short or long this year? Fashion hasn't had copyright, and you know what? They still do OK. Better than OK, actally, they're forced to innovate. Which, y'know, is supposedly the point of copyright.
Duplication forces innovation far more than sitting on one's laurels.
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The primary fashion designer can charge more for their product than what others have (even though they may be direct copies of near similar or great quality) advertising that they were the original and all others are bourgeois knock offs.
The design proliferates, customers with little money can wear the clothes from lesser known names and the rich people can pay top dollar for clothes from the original designer. As the knockoffs become more popular, the design becomes more popular, they essentially make the original more sought after. Everyone wins.
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Besides, just imagine *lawyers* trying to argue if two clothing designs are the same (or similar) or not. "... Your Honor, my client's capri pants are linen whereas the plantiff's pants are clearly khaki..."
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If you want to profit from the work of others (by duplication) copyright law says you need their permission. This means that copyright actually encourages innovation, because it is often cheaper to innovate than duplicate.
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Suppose I'm a fashion designer and I suddenly have a fantastic new design idea ... Puff skirts ... in TARTAN!!!
(OK so it's good job I'm not really a fashion designer, but work with me here ;-)
In today's industry this is a perfectly legitimate new design and might even make me a fortune if I'm lucky.
If this new law is passed however I could be blocked from producing such a product by a big designer who already produces a puff skirt. They will argue that my design is too similar to their own product. Not only that they will probably argue something along the lines of their existing product line "naturally encapsulates" tartan designs. This will effectively allow them to actually steal my design under the guise of them preventing me from stealing theirs!
My point is this isn't a law that says "you can't copy my exact design". This is (or will likely become) a law purely designed to allow the big boys to trample all over the small designers.
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Sorry, but you're incorrect. You want to equate encouraging innovation with discouraging duplication, and they aren't the same thing. It isn't a restatement at all; it's a completely different statement.
Being against certain types of patents and copyrights is like saying "everyone should just copy everyone else".
Again, you're wrong. It means that some things should not be capable of being restricted to a single company or person. In particular, business method patents seem to be increasingly used to attack competitors rather than compete with them.
This means that copyright actually encourages innovation, because it is often cheaper to innovate than duplicate.
To a certain extent, perhaps. However, locking up content for life of the creator plus 70 years does not. Get rid of the ridiculous copyright term and scale it back to something reasonable (and life of the author isn't reasonable either), and you'll also encourage innovation because people won't be able to rest on their laurels, J.D. Salinger being a prime example.
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Actually, that's not even close to true.
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O yes, all shirts and pants from before the act are not approved.
Of corse all the naked women walking around would be a fun side effect.
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Re: Naked people
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Not Thriving
"Yet, if the industry is thriving, competitive and innovative, why would you ever want to introduce new copyright? "
I'll grant you the competitive and innovative but the fashion industry is not currently thriving- sales are way off. The fashion component of the industry is off way more than the general GDP drop for any number of reasons including that fashion is seen as a bonus in life and not a staple like food.
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Re: Not Thriving
Two things:
First, are you suggesting that copyright will change this, somehow? If so, how does that work?
Second, a t hard emporary drop in sales due toeconomic times does not provide a prognosis for the industry as a whole. Sales may be down right now, but they will be right back up when the economy rebounds.
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Re: Not Thriving
Creating a design protection law would completely debilitate designers' creative rights. Designers tend to use each others' ideas and innovations in order to progress. Take that away, and suddenly we're left with boring boring boring.
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In clothes - a lot of people aren't really too picky and lean on quality before anything. I would be one of those.
I can find 200 different designs on jeans, same with shirts, shoes, etc..
And while the design does play a bit of a part, I'm not too picky - but I do want it to last a while. There are some name brands I avoid due directly to that.
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Sci-fi
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The Devil Wears Prada
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First, the vote results are surprising. Usually poll votes for proposed legislation are a very small percentage for such legislation and an overwhelming against. While against leads for, this is the first time the for has been in significant double digits. I wonder why this is?
Second, the garment industry operates at many different levels, from the high end designer houses to the lowly "big box stores" suppliers. I am not aware of what companies are backing the legislation, but would indeed be curious to see a breakdown by where such companies fall within the industry's levels.
BTW, while not the fashion industry, the most accurate watches I own are two cheap knockoffs from China that try and look like Rolexes (they are more reliable and run longer than my $$$ Omega). Of course even a casual inspection immediately reveals they are bogus (what do you expect for a $10 "Rolex" sold by a street vendor in Manhattan?). To this day I marvel at the fact that a watch, which if sold on the street for $10 obviously was purchased for much, much less, can even be manufactured at such an incredibly small cost.
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That's easy. Two weeks ago, a group that supported the legislation pointed people to the WW vote. So when we added it here, the vote was about 80/20 in favor. Normally the WW polls we put up have no or very few votes to start.
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fashion
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The reason why you think that we are addicted to "classics" (which I don't agree with by the way) is because we have a puritan foundation. There is nothing copyright laws can do about that.
This is a bad bill pushed through by the elite!!
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fashion
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