Legality vs. Rectitude

There is a gap between legality and rectitude in American society.  The laws, especially those affecting business and the privileged, have been crafted by their politicians to wrap their actions in legality. Unfortunately, something deemed legal does not make it right.

Increasingly in American society we are being confronted with this issue. The reframe of business in egregious acts, “…it’s not illegal”. We see this all the time in terms of public safety. Just look at how hard it is to step back from the chemical BPA in America. Canada and the European Union acted long ago. We were completely unable to get the beef industry to do wider checks for “mad cow” disease. South Korea and Japan banned American beef for years because of our lack of appropriate checks. If they will not eat it, why do we? I think that our failure will come back to haunt us. Mad Cow disease in humans might have an incubation period of a decade before serious signs might appear.

A big international and domestic confrontation is shaping up over rectitude. It is about patents and copyrights. America grants them for just about anything.  They have become the monopolistic weapon of large corporations and decidedly not in the nation’s interest in terms of innovation. 

On the domestic front we can see the issue with the disregard of ownership conferred by patents and copyrights. The Wall Street Journal had an article today about people posting copyrighted movies on YouTube. What businesses are running up against is a mindset of younger people that rebukes the legality of conferred ownership. They see obvious arbitrary egregious restraints. Older generations were acculturated in the concept that legality confers rightness. A generational culture shift has taken place.

Internationally the world is witnessing the monopolistic nature of American patents and copyrights. They saw clearly that legality is not equitable in the Apple vs. Samsung trial in America.  The court upheld the ridiculous, especially since all the original Apple “look and feel” was copied from Xerox in the same way. This is why the rest of the world has not agreed with the court decision.

The Asian market will eventually eclipse the American as the market of choice. When that happens, the liberal American copyrights and patents will be increasingly ignored.

If you really wish to track how American power is doing in the world, watch what happens internationally with patents and copyrights. Recently, a Caribbean country got a World Trade Organization ruling against America. To penalize America’s actions they used their international legal right as part of the judgment to no longer honor American patents and copyrights.