Reflexão de Stiglitz: ser furtado ou esquecido(?), eis a questão!

“I was at a conference in Taiwan. At that time, I knew that intellectual property rights were not always strictly enforced there. During a break in the conference, I had a little time to go to a bookstore. As I went to the store, I had a debate in my mind about what I hoped to see when I arrived. On the one hand, there was the possibility that they had stolen my intellectual property, that they had pirated one or more of my books. As we all know, theft is a terrible thing, and stealing intellectual property is a form of theft, so that would have been terrible. The other possibility was that they had not pirated one of my books and stolen my intellectual property, that they had ignored me. As I walked to the bookstore, I came to the conclusion that being ignored is far worse than having one’s property stolen, and I resolved that I would actually be much happier if they had stolen my intellectual property than if they had ignored me. When I got to the bookstore, they had in fact stolen it, and I was relieved". 

Joseph E. Stiglitz, Economic Foundations of Intellectual Property Rights. Duke Law Journal. 2008 

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