Often when I talk about copyright infringement, I end up criticizing certain trade associations that have successfully hijacked the IP infringement conversation, skewing the debate over China's legal reforms. IP protection in China is a much bigger topic than copyright of digital media, despite what you read about in the papers.

That being said, I am definitely not thrilled with the current lax enforcement of copyright over here. Copyright is being infringed upon at an astounding rate – this is kind of obvious, isn't it? Writing a post about movies being ripped off seems a bit like a waste of time, so I usually don't do it, but maybe I should once in a while.

I am motivated by this post I saw on Econlog, whose author is probably trying to insert some balance into the debate. I appreciate that, but I found the post tries a little too hard, resulting in an unfortunate apologist tone:

Rationalization #787 why trade with China is bad: "They're infringing our copyrights! Their government is doing nothing to stop it. We've got to impose sanctions until they get tough."

When Americans infringe American copyrights, we throw up our hands. "What can you do in the computer age?" When the Chinese do the same thing, however, it's a massive injustice, and its existence "proves" that their government is doing nothing about it.

Yes, we've got a particularly clean example of anti-foreign bias on our hands. It's also particularly outrageous, because Chinese infringement – unlike American infringement – probably costs copyright holders very little. After all, Americans might actually be willing to pay $19.99 for a CD. But all but a handful of Chinese would choose to do without if they had to pay full price.

Furthermore, given how hard it is to enforce copyright here at home, what exactly do critics have in mind when they demand that China "get tough"? If we really wanted to crack down on American copyright infringement, we'd throw infringing teens in jail and auction their parents' homes to pay the fines. It would probably work, but almost no one wants to see such draconian policies in the U.S.

Perhaps trade opponents simply want China to adopt iron-fisted copyright policies we'd never adopt ourselves.

I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment here, but let's be fair. I'm not sure where this guy is getting his information, but I don't think Americans have thrown up their hands and capitulated to copyright infringement. They've gone after infringers (I assume we are talking about digital products here) for many years, including companies, ISPs, and end users. I would say that RIAA's campaigns against individual users have been disastrous, so if anything, the fight has been too aggressive in the U.S. ("we'd throw infringing teens in jail" – seems like some groups out there are ready to do just that).

The fact that copyright infringement still occurs in the U.S. has a lot more to do with the technology than an unwillingness to "get tough". There is no doubt that the legal system, the enforcement authorities, and the legislative framework in the U.S. are better suited to fighting infringement, and that China, despite tremendous progress, has a long way to go.

However, just as I lose patience with the IP enforcement critics, and protectionist anti-trade zealots, who can only highlight problems with digital product infringement, I also can't abide by anyone who tries to create some sort of parity between the U.S. and China IP systems – that's going a bit too far in the opposite direction.

It's perfectly reasonable for copyright owners to complain about the system here, they are being screwed over in a very painful way. As long as they don't make up data and hijack the debate at the expense of patents, trademarks and other IP topics, I'm cool with constructive lobbying efforts. Let's keep it real out there.