Fashion and Copyright

Whenever I give talks on IP, I use the now-common example of fashion as an industry that is super-profitable, super-competitive, super-innovative very fast moving and yet is not governed by the IP, which is to say that it lives and thrives in a free market. But I’ve variously pointed out too that if IP were suddenly available, we could fully expect that the largest players (or what are now called “industry stakeholders”) in the market would probably grab on to it in celebration. The big players are always happy for a monopoly granted by the state. It turns out that this point is not entirely unrealistic, given the continuing threat of the Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Prevention Act, which seems dormant for now but could reappear at any time. This is a sure way to destroy an industry as we know it. (Thanks David Kramer.)