Agree with your sentiment but not the underling logic.
If IP owners aren't publishing in a country, why should that country protect their IP
Property rights don't vaporise automatically due to lack of use, e.g. in India squatters could, at one time, claim ownership to property after illegally sitting there for a certain period. This seems wrong to me. On the other end if Merck or Pfizer were to get pissed off at say Libya and deny its people certain drugs I would support suspending their property rights.
I agree that this situation is ridiculous and that the black market is often a solid incentive for legislators to re-consider ridiculous regulation. But the suspension of property rights is something that should be thought out meticulously before implementation; in this case it fits into the greater debate on the nature of IP as a "true" property.
Pro-copyright UN organization administering it
I don't think the UN was actively involved in any of these decisions nor overtly in their enforcement any more than it is in other issues - the author was simply quoting UN statutes to underline how this is an evolving debate.
There are a lot of intersecting rationales, but squatters' rights exist in most countries, including common-law ones like the US and UK, in part out of a desire to ensure that the legal situation of ownership doesn't diverge too far from the de facto situation of possession. Prevents the situation where someone digs up a dusty old deed from a basement showing they really own something that someone else is currently living on (and that maybe their parents were also living on); the on-the-ground facts of the past 100 years in that case trump the deed, regardless of whether it's genuine, promoting a sort of stability. Same with adverse possession and boundary disputes; if your neighbor puts up a fence and you don't challenge it, it eventually becomes the new property line, to avoid disputes always going back to ancient documents and upsetting the status quo.
There is, though, an intersecting economic-use rationale, which was especially prevalent in the American west, which is more like the copyright argument: something like, if you're not helping to make America great by neglecting your land, and someone else is willing to mine or farm there, well then move aside.
> Property rights don't vaporise automatically due to lack of use
IP rights are not property rights. They are a temporary monopoly enacted by society as a means for more works to enter the public sphere. If the copyright holders don't exploit their works in a certain country, the bargain is not upheld.
And some IP rights do vaporize automatically due to lack of use, namely trademarks.
> in India squatters could, at one time, claim ownership to property after illegally sitting there for a certain period. This seems wrong to me.
To me it seems right - property is a scarce resource. If someone does not make use of it, and lets it sit unclaimed to the point where they don't notice that someone lives there for quite some time, then why is it in the interest of society to acknowledge that property claim? But it is irrelevant to the discussion at hand, exactly because property is a scarce resource - the arguments that apply to property largely don't apply to copyright.
"If someone does not make use of it, and lets it sit unclaimed to the point where they don't notice that someone lives there for quite some time"
Then you get into different people having different ideas of what it means to "use" something.
A person buys a tract of land and doesn't develop it, because she thinks it should be a nature reserve. Another person wants to build a golf course there. Should the second person be able to just waltz in and build a golf course, because the land isn't being "used"?
Also, in the case of IP, a piece of IP can be "in use" without being publicly available yet. Consider a book being turned into a movie. That can take years.
Property rights don't vaporise automatically due to lack of use
Yes they do. Trademarks are a form of intellectual property, and expire if not maintained/fought.
Likewise most countries do not have absolute property rights. Squatters have rights. The government can compulsary purchase property for the public interest. Why is "copyright property" treated specially than normal property?
If IP owners aren't publishing in a country, why should that country protect their IP
Property rights don't vaporise automatically due to lack of use, e.g. in India squatters could, at one time, claim ownership to property after illegally sitting there for a certain period. This seems wrong to me. On the other end if Merck or Pfizer were to get pissed off at say Libya and deny its people certain drugs I would support suspending their property rights.
I agree that this situation is ridiculous and that the black market is often a solid incentive for legislators to re-consider ridiculous regulation. But the suspension of property rights is something that should be thought out meticulously before implementation; in this case it fits into the greater debate on the nature of IP as a "true" property.
Pro-copyright UN organization administering it
I don't think the UN was actively involved in any of these decisions nor overtly in their enforcement any more than it is in other issues - the author was simply quoting UN statutes to underline how this is an evolving debate.