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TODAY IN BAD IDEAS. The New York Times reports today on a bill that's gathering steam in congress to extend intellectual property protection to the design of clothing and handbags. In other words, once someone has laid claim to a certain design of dress, no one else can make the same one without permission of the original designer. The bill has been languishing in the House for over a year, and has now been introduced in the Senate by Chuck Schumer.
For the record, this is a really terrible idea. Judges are going to be called upon to decide how similar two handbags are (already a big problem in music where the issues are far clearer), prices for designer goods will go up since they will now be protected from competition, and the clothing available at retailers that ordinary people actually shop at will be deprived of major sources of ideas. Furthermore, the bill would stifle creativity by preventing designers from borrowing ideas from one-another.
The logic behind the bill is flawed. Copyrights exist because the government decides that, unless we grant certain people temporary monopolies on certain things, no-one will have an incentive to produce them. So we let people prevent others from selling their music so that artists can make money which in turn encourages them to spend time making music. We can of course argue whether this is best way to organize things in music--I tend to think that it's not, but this is the basic logic. Protection for fashion only makes sense if it is necessary to get people to produce quality fashion goods.
Clearly, this is not the case. Throw a stick in New York and chances are you'll hit a fashion designer, model, or photographer and there thousands of others desperate to get in. Designers already can use brands to distinguish their work (which are protected under trademark law). They enjoy a great deal of media attention and financial success and, most importantly, a lot of fashion is being produced. Copyrights for fashion, then, solve a problem that doesn't exist. If Congress passes this bill, it'll be fixing something that isn't close to broken.
--Sam Boyd
COMMENTS (10)
My god. We need a massive, massive reduction of current IP law, not an expansion.
That we don't have an organized constituency for this is a major failure of our political system.
Posted by: Anthony Damiani | August 9, 2007 12:31 PM
Three classes of people looking to get rich on this.
1. Lawyers
2. Costume historians, who can prove that a particular style of purse was carried by Indian women in 1875.
3.Any number of English tailors who can prove that Ralph Lauren's entire fall line is based on something Grandfather whipped up for the Earl of Derby in 1920.
Posted by: Steve Paradis | August 9, 2007 12:42 PM
One more reason not to vote for the Democratic Party.
One more reasons why I'm an idiot for making fun of Naderites for all of those years.
After the Fisa bill, this seems tame. But it's all a part of party every bit as enamored of corporate interests as the Republican one. I hope it does the death it deserves too, because there is no room in thos society for two anti-american, pro-corporate parties.
Posted by: soullite | August 9, 2007 1:30 PM
Stealing within the fashion design business is not new; though the problem is not quite as simple as this post suggests - a few rather egregious cases of outright swiping (I know at one point Ralph Lauren - or maybe Marc Jacobs - had to settle with Yves Saint Laurent over copying "le smoking", Saint Laurent's iconic tuxedo jacket for women) have had serious impact. On the one hand this can't help but huet some amount of dsign and innovation, tying up scrappy newcomers defending themselves against established names with deep pockets. On the other hand, it might help police the business of line-for-line copies and deliberate fakes, and that could help preserve some design integrity. Schumer, surely, has to pursue this given the high concentration of fashion business in NYC; I suspect that it won't go much of anywhere, but it probably merits a longer conversation.
Posted by: weboy | August 9, 2007 1:31 PM
Reducing fakes is hardly a desirable outcome, weboy -- the more tightly fashion is controlled by those with money, the more explicitly our dress will express our class. That's not even remotely desirable.
Posted by: Mike Meginnis | August 9, 2007 1:40 PM
The notion that dress doesn't already have explicit class distinctions is debatable, at best; fakes don't provide class, they provide a chance for people who wouldn't otherwise have any opportunity to own a "designer name" to pretend that they do. Few fakes really pass muster against the real thing (which is one reason, outside of profit, why designers hate them). And in any case this isn't about cultural outcomes, but about the livelihoods of working people in the fashion industry who make their living, in part, on the ability to create unique deigns and profit from their labor. Protecting the uniqueness of their creations is good for their business, and their creativity is good for the culture. As I said, I don't necessarily think the bill will pass, and I think there are reasonable questions about whether it does more harm (protecting major corporate designs over scrappy newcomers) than good. But is their value in protecting creative design work? Sure. Egalitarianism isn't a great argument against that.
Posted by: weboy | August 9, 2007 2:09 PM
You're right -- the idea that dress doesn't have explicit class distinctions is debatable at best. So it's convenient that I actually *said* this measure would increase the extent to which that was true, not create the phenomenon wholesale. This would create one more strike against the lower classes in job interviews and other, similar arenas -- a strike they surely don't need.
Meanwhile, the idea that designers need this protection is laughable.
Posted by: Mike Meginnis | August 9, 2007 3:04 PM
By the way, throw a stick in New York and you certainly won't hit a model-- they're too thin.
Posted by: Dilan Esper | August 9, 2007 6:01 PM
This is obviously a bill being logrolled by lobbyists on behalf of someoen who thinks this will somehow make them richer (or has been persuaded by someone that it will make them richer, which is not the same thing. Write your Congressman/Senator and write Chuck Schumer saying that we did not want a Democratic congress that would pass a law that cause to pay $500 for a pair of jeans. Instead, copyright and patent should be rolled back to let in more competition.
Posted by: Rick Kane | August 10, 2007 9:52 AM
According to me "I feel making beautiful clothes is an art and it requires creativity and time, to make somebody look beautiful".
Roli Singh
info@rolisingh.com
http://www.rolisingh.com
Posted by: Roli Singh | October 20, 2007 6:00 AM