The Fashion Industry As a Model For IP Reform 398
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by
kdawson
from the rip-mix-burn dept.
from the rip-mix-burn dept.
Scrameustache writes "In this 15-minute TED talk, Johanna Blakley addresses a subject alien to most here — fashion — but in a way sure to grab our attention. The lesson is about how the fashion industry's lack of copyright protection can teach other industries about what copyright means to innovation. And yes, she mentions open source software. There is one killer slide at 12:20 comparing the gross sales of low-IP-protection industries with those of films and books and music. If you want to know more, or if you prefer text, the Ready To Share project website should give you all the data you crave on the subject."
Plenty of garment based patents. (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=KrsEAAAAEBAJ&dq=denim
http://www.google.com/patents?lr=&q=fashion+clothing&spell=1&oi=spell
http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=nX4CAAAAEBAJ&dq=clothing
for just a sampler.
Planned obsolescene is in common (Score:4, Interesting)
In fashion, women are required to constantly buy new clothes lest they be considered "frumpy". Last year's clothes are perfectly good, quality-wise, but a culture has been created by which anyone who wears them is subject to public ridicule. The point of all this is to keep the fashion industry's pockets full. What kind of developer, oops I mean designer, doesn't enjoy working on new designs? They want everyone buying the latest greatest design, even if it's not as good as last year's.
Likewise in software, where upgrades are mandatory even though the current software works just fine. "But it's old tech!" the developer shouts at his utterly stupid users. "Why won't you upgrade? I really enjoyed working on this!" I recently asked a question on a support forum about Drupal. I didn't get my question answered, as the developers immediately discussed the fact I was using the "old tech" version (5) and the entire discussion became about when I was going to upgrade to the latest greatest version (7). Why should I? My software works just fine and customers are happy. Security upgrades are more like obscurity upgrades. "Because it's last year's fashion, daaahling"
Okay, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
First off, fashion occupies a unique niche in culture and purchasing decisions. As noted http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/597 [publicknowledge.org]on a relevent blog "The fashion industry profits by setting trends in clothing, and then inducing consumers to follow those trends. This process leads us to treat clothing as a status-conferring good to be replaced once the fashion changes, rather than as a durable good to be replaced only when all the buttons fall off. Trend-driven consumption is good for the fashion industry, because it sells more clothing. " That nature is hardly applicable to software, literature, film, or design.
The New York times http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/us/04fashion.html?_r=2&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all [nytimes.com]ran a story that included this telling quote, "“If I see something on Style.com, all I have to do is e-mail the picture to my factory and say, ‘I want something similar, or a silhouette made just like this,’ ” Ms. Anand said. The factory, in Jaipur, India, can deliver stores a knockoff months before the designer version."
An NPR story http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1434815 [npr.org]noted that "it's expensive and risky to actually create new designs. It's cheaper and easier to simply knock off successful ones."
The entire point of IP is to encourage social and cultural development through the protection of initial investment. The fashion industry demonstrates what happens when IP is weakened or non-existant - a disincentive to create and develop and a thriving copy-culture.
Re:Sadly unlikely to happen (Score:5, Interesting)
It's already got extremely strong IP protection, enforced strongly by the police. The Intellectual Property in their case though is called trademarks.
If you are travelling from China into Paris with twenty Gucci-branded handbags, the police will slap you with a fine that's a lot bigger than the current "fines" for downloading software.
Re:Umm, are you kidding? (Score:3, Interesting)
The video addresses exactly this point, and appears to have been made with reference to speaking to big hitters in the fashion industry who've been working in it for decades.
Briefly, it raises a number of points:
1. The people who are buying the knock-offs probably wouldn't be buying the really expensive designer clothes anyway.
2. Industries with relatively low IP protection are much larger than industries with a lot of IP protection. (Though I think this is a bit of a disingenuous point - the industries at the top of the scale are selling things that are necessities rather than luxuries in today's society, so of course they're going to be huge. Specifically, they're food, fashion - remember even a £3 Primark T-shirt comes under the heading of "fashion" - and cars.)
3. IP protection would be really difficult because it's very hard to establish precisely what makes a design original. Set the bar too high and nobody can claim copyright on a design because it's practically impossible to prove that you really were the first to come up with the idea, set it too low and the tiniest change means it's no longer a knock-off. We already see exactly this problem in the music industry when an artist is accused of plagiarising another artists' tune - the resulting legal wrangles go on for years. (cf. "Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree/Down Under" [bbc.co.uk])
4. Whether you like it or not, it forces people within the industry to work harder. The fashion industry thrives on constantly finding the Next Big Thing, and makes a nice chunk of cash doing so. Who wants to buy the Next Big Thing when it's almost identical to the Last Big Thing which is still sitting in the wardrobe and is in pretty good repair?
Software = Recipe (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Umm, are you kidding? (Score:3, Interesting)
i wonder what would happen if the laws where changed so that anyone could create their own steam boat willie, but only walt disney company could have ol' walts name attached to it.
Re:Umm, are you kidding? (Score:3, Interesting)
the biggest problem with copyright is that it was created to do one thing, make sure that writers got a cut of the sales related to printings of texts they had written.
then it got applied to audio recordings, photos, movie recordings and software.
the basic problem was not that someone was printing copies and giving them away, back then the cost of materials and time made that basically impossible. Sure, it had cut down the time vs hand writing a copy greatly, but it still took time to set each page and then make the print; never mind the cost of the letters, press and paper.
This is something that have followed physical creations since we first learned to make things. Price have been based on the time and materials needed, as the time taken to make something would cut into the makers time to do something else. Something like say, tending the field and animals that would feed him.
But as production becomes increasingly automated, and now we are getting flexible tools that only need a new set of instructions to create a new object (3D printers anyone?), the cost in time is dropping through the floor. Heck, a home printer can be set to do its thing while i go do something else that may be more directly involved in my survival. And as the cost in equipment and setup time becomes less, so follows the need to mass produce to make up for the initial effort.
the black and white laser printer can with equal ease be feed the complete works of shakespeare as it can some random report for office or school. And it can change between the two in seconds, not days like the older printing systems needed.
observe how the last book in the harry potter series was scanned, OCR, translated to german and proofread in 48 hours after its initial release. All done by people online doing various other things as their day job or equivalent (or surviving on minimal welfare checks for all i know).
machines are taking over more and more menial tasks, resulting in the jobs left being creative ones. And as more people are free to be creative, the value of those jobs drops like rocks, thanks to basic economics (job market saturation, anyone?).
i just wonder what this increased automation will do to the world economy given time, as with less people working, there is less income to spend on the very products being made.
Re:VERY, VERY Flawed Analogy... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ohh... Just TRY incorporating the second two into ANY industry not based on shoe shopping.
"Induced obsolescence"? Really? How would you like to have to re-buy ALL your software, books, movies, CDs EVERY SEASON instead of every time a new digital media appers?
Why would you have to buy it? Because of "Acceleration in creative innovation", which translates to:
Fashionistas want to stay ahead of the curve. They don't want to be wearing what everybody else is wearing and so they want to move on to the next trend as soon as possible. EVERY SEASON these designers have to struggle to come up with the new fabulous idea that everybody's going to love. And this [..] is very good for the bottom line.
In other words - snobbery supported by profit margin supported by snobbery.
Sure... you might say that we already have that in constantly changing "modern" music, artsy-fartsy films or even Apple. But none of those "industries" can be pushed into fashion industry's "season based" product cycle.
Why? Because fashion is the only "art" that can become OBSOLETE.
Sure -- and that's why we never see new releases of software that simply add a pile of tick-box features that add nothing to productivity (and change the file formats, to make it harder for users of old versions to use your output), shortly followed by withdrawal of support for the old version.
Microsoft, Apple and so on follow just that model. The only reasons they're not "season based" are that they're less affected by the weather and development cycles are longer.
Re:Planned obsolescene is in common (Score:3, Interesting)
In fashion, women are required to constantly buy new clothes lest they be considered "frumpy". Last year's clothes are perfectly good, quality-wise, but a culture has been created by which anyone who wears them is subject to public ridicule.
There's a very, very narrow demographic, who pay attention to fashion "seasons", which only last a couple of months, and have money to buy designer clothes. The closer you try to stay to the bleeding edge, the faster you have to replace your wardrobe. It's a game for people who can afford it. For the average woman, design changes are filtered through the mass market reproduction process. Their clothes are less extreme and have more staying power, probably several years.
There's a healthy secondary market in out of date designer clothes too. My niece made a nice living for a while buying out of date fashions and reselling them. You need a good eye and you need good timing. Wearing clothes informed by last year's fashion trends is chic. Wearing clothes that *set* last year's fashion trends is tacky. But somehow wearing *some* clothes that set *certain* fashion trends several years ago can be chic again. I'm not informed enough to state the precise algorithm, but I think it's a matter of picking a garment that embodies things that people remember favorably, is not so newly out of date that people think you're wearing it because you're ignorant, and has a look that plausibly might come back soon.
I don't think women often get ridiculed unless they look like they're trying to be up to date but failing, or the people doing the ridiculing are fashion enthusiasts who'd probably have catty things to say about anyone.
Re:Some big differences... (Score:3, Interesting)
I suggest you look at older fashions. Tie becomes hooks become buttons. A few natural fabrics which are local start being mixed and then synthetics get invented and the whole idea of building a fabric specific to a garment. i.e. something like the cotton / polyester blend that is likely in the shirt you are wearing didn't fall out of the sky it is a result of iterative innovation.
Re:Flawed Analogy? (Score:3, Interesting)
And that's just another reason why clothing is not directly comparable to any other industry. It's not that you can't make a comparison between clothing and software, any more than you can't compare apples and oranges — both are clearly fruit. But it's going to be difficult to get a patent in clothing that is not a gimmick nobody would wear, while the same is not true in software. Or, for that matter, in automotive design, which compared to clothing, is a field in its infancy. We've been wearing clothes a lot longer than we've had conveyances. Let's not even compare Software on that basis.
Re:Examples not transferable - TM violate = jailti (Score:3, Interesting)
More than once she mentions items which don't have copyright protections because they are "too utilitarian." If computer software is "about utility" why should it have copyright protection?
As far as trademark is concerned, this only really applies to the logo. You can't trademark a design. I can't make a new type of shoe and say "this is trademarked so now you can't copy it." I can, however, make a unique "shoe logo" and stamp it prominently on every shoe I sell. Then, when the knockoff designers make copies of my shoes, they won't have the cool design on their shoes.
When it comes to the question of why pay for a movie when you download it for free, this is where I think price, availability, hassle and extras can tip the scales. First of all, don't price your product too high or people won't buy it and will seek out other methods of obtaining it (either used or pirated versions). Secondly, make your product available. I can't count how many times people have said they wanted to buy movie X but couldn't because it wasn't released in their DVD region. Thirdly, if you add hassles to your legal copy (DRM, unskippable ads, etc) people will flock away from it. Alternatively, if you make it hassle-free, people will choose it over trying to find and download a good pirated copy. Lastly, if you include cool extra features in your paid-version, people will buy that over the "just the movie DVD rip" torrent.
This isn't to say that everyone would flock to the paid-for copy. There are people out there who would download the pirated version even if the movie company was selling a DRM-free, Platinum Version with a thousand extra features for $5. You just need to realize that these people aren't your customers. Just like Gucci realized that the people buying cheap Gucci knock-offs weren't their customers.
Perhaps you can even find a way to profit from them like some high fashion designers who knocked off their own looks for sale to the "cheap knockoff" chains. To give an example from Disney, they're currently giving away free music every day for 50 days. ( http://twitter.com/disneymusic [twitter.com] ) The "free music buffs" will eat this up and download every one. They might even discover that they like the song and go out and buy the album it came from. In the end, Disney is "out" 50 songs yet potentially increases their sales. (And yes, I know that Disney is a huge source of our current copyright woes, but like any big company there are good things they do and bad things. I figured I'd give them credit for one of the good things.)
IP: patents and the US Constitution (Score:3, Interesting)
The *entire* point of patents, as defined in the US Constitution, is "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;"
Notice it says "limited time", because it does *not* promote progress by giving unlimited time. In fact, you could argue (and I'd love to see someone take this to court) that the DCMA violates this clause, as well as the current patent law, since it prevents progress.
mark
How the rag trade works (Score:4, Interesting)
Fashion depends on churn. There aren't many original ideas. If you look at this year's runway fashion, and are familiar with the history of fashion, you can usually find a matching piece from decades ago. The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York has a large library of clothing against which new designs can be compared. This year, we have khaki (again), Gautier is trying green spandex shorts (80s aerobic wear), and Issey Miyake is over-pleating again (he did that better in the '80s) and using pink accents (so last year.) The jeans industry keeps fussing with various levels of fading, but they've been doing that for so long that nobody is paying much attention.
There's some technological progress, and it gets IP protection. Gore-Tex was patented, and for a long time, had a monopoly over waterproof fabrics that breathe well. Progress in materials, in sewing technology, and in cleaning has led to new ranges of clothing. Jeans, for example, depend on a sewing technology for strong corners that's only about fifty years old. (Today, rivets in jeans are decorative, not structural.) Sportswear, which was invented by Coco Chanel, wasn't really feasible before washing machines. Elastic fabrics opened up many new options. Not much new has come along in the last two decades, ("pleather" made a small splash) and fashion technology has somewhat stagnated.
As the TED talk points out, the big thing today is trademark protection via "designer labels". This is a relatively new concept. Until the late 1970s, no respectable garment maker would have the designer's mark visible, let alone a prominent feature of the design. Logos were associated with cheap T-shirts. The interlocking double C now associated with Chanel did not appear on Chanel products until the 1980s.
The apparel distribution pipeline is incredibly inefficient. Over 60% of apparel is eventually sold on sale. There's a hierarchy. First there's the initial sale, with a big markup. Then there's the sale rack at the original retailer, with the original tags still attached. Then there's the discount retailer who buys from the original retailer and resells from their own store. Finally, the unsold apparel is rolled into big balls about eight feet in diameter, which are rolled into shipping containers and shipped to third world countries for final sale, or recycled into nonwoven fabrics like cleaning cloths. There was an attempt during the dot-com era, called "Tradeweave", to create a secondary trading market in unsold apparel, but it only lasted from 1999-2001.
The watch industry is a branch of the fashion industry now. "We are not in the watch industry, we are are in the luxury industry" says the CEO of Rolex. They had the basic problem that their overpriced machinery is less accurate than a midrange quartz watch, and they now have the worse problem that people who grew up with cell phones see no need for watches. There have been attempts by the phone industry to do "designer cell phones", but so far, that's mostly a joke. Apple tried to position themselves as a high-end product, but you can now get an iPhone at WalMart for $97. Emulating the fashion industry hasn't worked for technology industries.
Re:How the rag trade really works (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's the bottom of the apparel food chain. [alibaba.com] "Bulk Bale Clothing". $0.25/lb. Minimum order 55,000 pounds. Supply availability 1,000,000 pounds per month. Bulk in 1000 pound bales.
That's just one of a hundred similar suppliers. "We currently have 28 containers of brand name clothing acquired in a bank deal." "250,000 lbs baled used clothing. 25% coats,sweaters, heavy clothing. $0.84/lb."
That's life in the no-IP world of apparel. The wastage is enormous.