Let’s play a game I call “Stupid or Ethical?”
The first time I interviewed Robin Lee, president of Lee Valley Tools, I asked him a few questions that readers had been asking me for years. Robin’s answers are paraphrased below, though I’ve heard him say them so many times in the last decade I could almost quote him verbatim.
Q: Why doesn’t Veritas come out with an inexpensive Bed Rock plane to compete with Lie-Nielsen?
A: That wouldn’t be fair to Tom Lie-Nielsen. We’d rather produce our own line of planes instead of copying his.
Q: Why doesn’t Veritas come out with a line of less expensive Stanley 750 chisels to compete with Lie-Nielsen?
A: That wouldn’t be fair. Besides, we have our own line of chisels already and might do something different in the future.
Q: Why doesn’t Veritas make an infill plane to compete with all these makers who charge thousands of dollars for a plane?
A: That’s their market. We’d rather build our own planes than copy someone else’s.
Q: Why doesn’t Veritas produce a less-expensive brass-back dovetail saw….
Well, you get the idea.
On the other side of that fence, Lie-Nielsen has stayed out of Veritas’s back yard on a number of occasions. During one visit to the Lie-Nielsen Toolworks, I saw a prototype of a bullnose plane. When Veritas came out with its bullnose shortly thereafter, Lie-Nielsen shelved its plans.
The question isn’t about the legality of copying tools. It’s much more important than that. Some might contend that this sort of behavior is stupid. Shouldn’t these companies be out to grab as much market share as possible? Or is it somehow ethical to steer clear of your competitors’ ideas and instead push your own ideas (assuming you have any) forward?
My bias is obvious. My work gets ripped off everyday. People copy my articles, put them on CDs and sell them on eBay. They post them for free download on Russian sites. They place my copyrighted text whole cloth on their foreign web sites and claim it for their own.
Just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s right.
For me, copying tools is a simple issue. Ask yourself one question: Will the copy confuse the reasonable consumer? If the copy looks so much like a competitor’s that it is going to confuse buyers, then it’s dishonest.
I’m not saying you can’t do it. Or that you’re violating laws. I’m just saying that I won’t support you with my dollars.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. For those who haven’t been reading WoodNet and the debates on copied tools, try this link. Or (if you have four hours of your life to spare) this.
OK – Something like that doesn’t just come out of left field. What gives? Did someone just publish a Russian translation of Moxon with photos and commentary?
Don’t get me wrong – I agree with your position. But what generated that particular rant at this particular time?
Sorry for the lack of context. There have been some raging debates on WoodNet about copied tools. I’ll post a link in text above.
Chris
Chris
Must be the same Russian woodworking forum that ‘borrows’ my content on a monthly basis. Even though I’m Russian on one side, I don’t know any. That side only spoke Yiddish. Otherwise I would visit that forum and see what is up over there. Guys in black leather jackets, sipping vodka while turning wood?
Gary
Hi Christopher
Well stated!
There has been much debate on the Forums (originally on UK Workshop, and more recently on WN and Sawmill Creek), and this continues. Most appear to understand whether the situation is legal or illegal, but many do not understand that legal does not necessary include ethical. I think you made this point well. I do hope that this gets a wide audience, as it deserves.
Kind regards from Perth
Derek Cohen
Reminds me of an ethics discussion in which I was involved. It boiled down to ethics in medicine is something physicians strive daily to push forward. Ethics in law is something that people strive to not fall below. Ethical and legal are in most cases at the opposite ends of the behavior spectrum.
That being said, there should be competition in the market place. Just because LV has a small, medium, and large shoulder plane doesn’t mean that LN can not offer a similar line of tools.
Chris, regarding people ripping off your work: some people don’t have a shred of ethics or a conscience. Fortunately, those woodworkers seem to be in the minority.
Kari… I wish I could agree with you. There is a rapidly growing ‘underground’ on Ebay of people selling ripoffs of copyrighted work, mostly in digital forms. I’ve been monitoring the problem for a while and have noted a steady growth in sellers and buyers.
To fight the plague, you have to have the time and money to conduct the fight. That’s why copyright, trademark and similar infringements often go uncontested. It takes a lot of cash to fight those battles. It’s not hard to get formal copyright or trademark rights, but the average small business does not have the resource to protect those rights.
Gary
Kari,
I completely agree that woodworkers are much more honest than average. I don’t think that most of the people ripping off our copyrights are woodworkers. They’re profiteers.
And then there are the scrapers and aggregators…. but this isn’t a blog about blogging. So I won’t say much more there.
Chris
I was under the impression that a major goal of both Veritas and Lie-Nielsen was to grow an educated and passionate market for quality hand tools?
To a large degree, the situation with hand tools was so poor because the manufacturers working in that space (Stanley, Record, et al) weren’t thinking much beyond copying each other and reducing costs. And a business built on copying is pretty much doomed in the face of asian industry.
So by keeping out of each others faces and allowing each other to grow and win in some categories, Veritas and Lie-Nielsen are exercising a form of symbiotic competition in which they both win; woodworkers are coming back to hand tools, they’ve learned the difference between quality and poor copies, and they’ve brought their wallets.
I don’t see why it has to be a choice between stupid or ethical?
c.
Hi Chris,
Well said!!
I’ve been following the relevant threads on WoodNet and it really annoys me that companies can get away with the kind of copying being dicussed.
Regards,
Ian.
Perhaps the game should be: Stupid, Ethical or Smart.
Chris
Thanks for your post Chris. I think the issue should be looked at like this: What would you do if the guy you were thinking about copying was your neighbor? If you had an iota of honor, you wouldn’t copy his work, even if it wasn’t illegal to do so.
For some reason people who defend this blatent copying ascribe different standards to company behavior then they do individual behavior.
Some folks believe (or want to believe) anything legal, or even anything they can get away with, is ethical. I have my doubts that they understand the basic concept of ethics. These folks probably treat their neighbors the same way. While they are probably a minority of woodworkers as well as society in general, they can be vocal.
Chris,
Thanks for the post, the blog, and the links to the woodnet discussion. Very thought-provoking.
The viewpoints of one poster in particular in the woodnet forum were especially enlightening. I think his inability (or unwillingness) to acknowledge the ethical issues facing the manufacturers, importers, dealers, and consumers was directly tied to his politics. To question the ethics of cheap knockoffs was to question the validity of free trade, capitalism, his politics in general and he wasn’t having any of it.
Questioning the business ethics of knockoffs does not make you a pinko-socialist-weenie. Nor does it make you an America-first, protectionist xenophobe. Really.
1. People cheat, lie, and do bad things every day. Unfortunately woodworking is no different. Some people are just cheep.
2. i have purchased cheep tools because I could not afford good ones, or even ok ones. But, when the money became available I purchased the Lie Nielsens and Lee Valleys of the world. Ultimately you get what you pay for.
3. What we are seeing is the ethical delima of greed. Greed by the manufactures of the cheepos that do not work without a great deal of time and effort; and greed of the consumer.
Brannon
"If the copy looks so much like a competitor’s that it is going to confuse buyers, then it’s dishonest."
Chris – I’ve a feeling this has already been covered ad nauseum in the debate on Woodnet (I’m not a member there – there are too many forums and not enough time, so I have to choose), but your comment quoted above is salient. It’s not only dishonest, it is actually illegal (it’s a "trade dress" infringement).
You missed the knockoff of the calvo brass mallet… same people.
http://www.woodcraft.com/product.aspx?ProductID=146737&FamilyID=5520
I have to say, when your new product development team consists of a woman who is a confessed novice, but used to run a bicycle shop; a guy who’s a "power tool addict," but spends his free ite estoring motorcycles; and a career retail man…
(this is all on their website)
Well, lacking the input of real woodworkers, it’s no wonder they have issues. If they’re not rippping off other people’s work, they’re putting out there all kinds of wonderful things like overengineered sharpening jigs, knife kits (?!?) or "precision" squares that might look good in a catalog, but in the store, they weren’t square. Over 2", the setup squares weren’t square. Over 12 or 24", I could see. But a 2" setup square that’s out of square is really poor execution.
LeeValley copy japanese pull saws or not?
Is there a difference between a company making a profit off their mass-produced imitations and a cleaver individual making something on his/her own so he/she doesn’t have to pay full price for the original?
I get a certain pleasure (and I think many of you do, too) out of using my resources and ingenuity to make something that looks as good as the original but for a fraction of the cost. I’ll give you an example. I’m in the middle of making a new bench. The style of bench I’m building can be bought from Company ABC. I can promise you that I am copying their bench — as close as I can. I have no intentions of selling my bench or passing it off as Company ABC’s bench. But in the end, I’ll get my bench, I’ll save money, and Company ABC loses money.
I’m not trying to be smart here, but aren’t I just as unethical as the companies we’re talking about, only on a smaller scale?
I agree with everything y’all are saying, I just want to hold myself and my "backyard shop" to the same standard I’m requiring of others.
Glen,
I don’t think what you are doing is unethical. For me this is entirely about the marketplace.
Besides, when we make stuff for ourselves, we rarely count the true cost of our labor (probably because we enjoy the labor). If you tried to sell your copy of a workbench, I bet yours would have to be more expensive than the manufactured one.
Just my 2 cents.
Chris
Well, if the problem is only entirely about the marketplace, the fact that your articles are shared for free on russian amateur forums should not make you worry.
Skinner,
Ridiculous.
My market is in buying and selling information. I pay thousands of dollars for manuscripts of authors and sell that information in my magazines. If someone gives these stories away for free then it’s exactly the same thing. They are copying me and undercutting me on price.
It’s unethical and is outright theft.
Chris
No kid ever thinks to himself "I want to grow up to make knockoff copies of popular products to sell at lower cost." It’s not an endeavor I think anyone would aspire to for any reason at all but money and greed or utter necessity. Before we get to the post-hoc justifications of marketplace and competition, I think there are very few people who would want this sort of employment and life for their kids.
I brought it up on WN also, but to me the only operative notion here is: sleazy. It’s sleazy behavior at best – and there may be a legal loophole, or technicality to justify it – or not – but personally I’d rather not engage in this sort of endeavor.
Chris, the question is more complex then how you describe it.
Here are some kind of argument on which you should reflect.
a) I don’t know the budgets of your magazine, but I’m sure that the most of the money come from advertising and not from sales.
b) Following your reasoning, for any a person who build his own workbench there is a workbench not sold.
But it is not so.
Who download your articles is not a potential (lost) buyer of your magazine. If your article was not shared, they live simply without it. So you don’t loose their money.
(Personally I don’t download any copyrighted magazine, because i find all the information that i need for free in legal blogs and legal forums. I think there are more informaton on the web then in all the issue of your magazine. Thank God there are many person intelligent and prepared who love share their knowledge.)
c) The comparison with the thieves is simply wrong. If a person steals a car, that car there is no more, but if a person download an article, that article is there again.
Skinner,
> a) I don’t know the budgets of your magazine, but I’m sure that the most of
the money come from advertising and not from sales.
Nope. Less than 25 percent is from ad sales. The rest is from the consumer. Not
sure how it matters. But there you go.
> b) Following your reasoning, for any a person who build his own workbench
there is a workbench not sold.
> But it is not so.
> Who download your articles is not a potential (lost) buyer of your magazine.
If your article was not shared, they live simply without it. So you don’t loose
their money.
People can download it from our website and pay $6. Or they can download it for
free from the Russians. So we lose that potential sale.
> c) The comparison with the thieves is simply wrong. If a person steals a car,
that car there is no more, but if a person download an article, that article is
there again.
So hundreds of years of international copyright law is simply invalid?
I think you’re baiting me. Wait….. are you really my wife? My 12-year-old
daughter?
Chris
Skinner,
A large part of the motivation behind copyright protection in the US was as an incentive for people to put their ideas and writings out in public. In exchange for the public sharing of ideas, they were in return granted protection of exclusivity for a period of time in order to remove the ‘downside’ of losing any exclusivity of information. Furthermore, in most cases, the copyright laws are the exclusive basis for income in the generation of new ideas.
For instance, without the protection of copyright laws, how does PWW generate any sort of income, or pay its employees? If it is well known that you can buy the magazine for $6, or download it for free, is it really your contention that the magazine would lose no revenue?
What would be the incentive for the publication of intensively researched medical textbooks, for instance? Or of the arts in general? What incentive to create is there within a fundamentally capitalistic framework at all? How is the researcher who spends his time in the generation of written ‘ideas’ to support his or her family?
I have the sense that most of the people arguing against the sort of position Chris posited are coming much more from a place of ‘cheaper goods for me’ than they are from a serious consideration of the ethical and societal implications. I sincerely doubt that in the event it was your intellectual property on the chopping block that you would support ‘co-opting’ so casually
Chris,
> Nope. Less than 25 percent is from ad sales. The rest is from the consumer. Not
sure how it matters. But there you go.
This is very curious. Is your balance-sheet pubblic? Your budget include your web-shop or entries other then magazine sales?
> People can download it from our website and pay $6. Or they can download it for
free from the Russians. So we lose that potential sale.
The first two sentences are right, but the third is not.
If your articles were not freely available, i think that who now download it from Russians simply do without.
>> c) The comparison with the thieves is simply wrong. If a person steals a car,
that car there is no more, but if a person download an article, that article is
there again.
> So hundreds of years of international copyright law is simply invalid?
Your response not refutes my statement.
My humble opinion is that you and Raney should learn more about the history of copyright.
(try this to begin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright_law)
And finally, yes I’m 12 year old, but i’m not your daughter.
Is a problem for you to discuss with a teenager?
If not, please answer this question (Raney could answer too)?
Why, according to your opinion, there’s so many people (you included) who shares his knowledge freely on his blog, on his website, on specialized forums or newsgroups?
Skinner,
I’ll be happy to carry on this conversation offline for as long as you like. As we are far afield of woodworking, and we are boring the rest of the planet, I’m done here.
My e-mail is: chris.schwarz@fwmedia.com
Chris
Well, Chris, this is your blog and you decide what is in topic or not, by the way I have not started this discussion, I have only followed it.
But let me leave with some questions and a final consideration on which I invite you to reflect.
Two friend who share the same paper issue of your magazine are thieves?
The dozens of people who read your magazine in the waiting room of a dentist are thieves?
The hundreds of people who read your books in public libraries are thieves?
You are a lucky guy, not only you make the best job on the earth, the writer, but you write about your hobby, woodworking.
You have the possibility to see and try a lot of tools, you have the possibility to speak with toolmakers, cabinetmakers, woodworkers, you could visit their shop, you could speak with other journalist and writers, you could read every book about your hobby.
I know people who would pay to have a job as your. I could pay too for a job as your.
Be happy for what you have and what you do, in my humble opinion you should not get angry for some russian who share your articles on their amaterur forums?
Bye
My idea of a "blended shop" is having both Veritas and Lie-Nielsen plans on my workbench.
🙂
(Just wanted to cap off your blog entry with an on-topic comment, Chris.)
BTW – I’m sorry for the crack about the Russians at the top of the thread. I had no idea it would generate such a debate. For the record – I completely made up the part about the Russians. As far as I know, Moxon hasn’t even been to Russia.
🙂
What is unethical about making a tool for less and selling it, if the person isn’t violating patent law? Isn’t that the marketplace? I’ll buy quality when I need it or to support innovators. Nontheless, when I don’t need quality or don’t have the budget, I don’t want to pay more than I have to. I like having competition.
Also, what is wrong with the company trying to make a profit. Isn’t that what good companies do? Would you invest in a company that never made a profit or had a chance of making a profit?
I’m for the little guy. I buy local produce, support my local running store, buy meat from our local butcher all at a higher cost. But if the cost became prohibitive or exhorbonate, I don’t mind "rewarding" someone who came up with a way to make something cheaper. Doesn’t LV have a cheaper line of tools coming out?
Matt,
Your approach is entirely valid.
I’m not saying my feelings on this are logical, universal or should be applied to everyone. But it is just how I see the world, right or wrong. It probably explains why I’m a mid-tier magazine writer at a Midwestern company, and not in New York City.
Thanks for the comment.
Chris
Chris
I have a slightly different take on LV vs LN
Essentially both companies have chosen not to directly compete with each other. They each make similar but different tools. In part this grows the overall hand tool market which ultimately benefits all of us.
As to the "exact" copies, making a copy for your own use has a long and honourable history — especially among pattern makers — and to some extent is specifically authorised within copyright law.
Making copies to sell for a profit is not ethical — but then, like Adam Smith, I’ve had the advantage of a judean-christrian upbringing.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts
Ian
Ian,
Adam Smith was widely believed to a Deist, as opposed to a belief in a more personal (Judeo-Christian)God. More importantly, what part of the Judeo-Christian ethic is being violated here? If you say it’s stealing, please elaborate. If I decided to put a product to market with no copyright protection, I am essentially making a business decision that says anyone can copy my work. Therefore, someone is copying, not stealing.
I think a more relevent question would be, was my product made in an ethical way in relation to labor & envirnoment? And, what am I supporting by purchasing this product? I don’t think "copying" an "un-copyrighted" product is the biggest question.
Related (recently hotly debated) subject in the software world:
http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/8354//Why-Your-Startup-Shouldn-t-Copy-37signals-or-Fog-Creek.aspx
Basically, the take home message is that if you copy something, you have nowhere to go. If you don’t understand what went into something, then how would you know what the next improvement might be? Maybe you will miss some subtle detail because you did not understand its importance.
Matt
Regardless of whether Adam Smith was a Deist or not, his concepts of free market and laisse faire (did I spell that right?) were developed within a society which, though heavily stratified by class, maintained within each social class a relatively narrow set of generally agreed ethical standards.
I suggest that contemporary western society no longer has a "relatively narrow set of generally agreed" ethical standards.
Ian
I agree that contemporary society doesn’t agree on ethics, or politics, or religion… but would you sacrifice diversity for conformity? Also, Smith’s work was about the FREE market, essentially, people bringing goods to market and competition driving down prices, not unlike the situation in this blog. Furthermore, doesn’t competition drive the "real" tool companies to create new innovations? Or to drive down their own manufacturing costs? Or to patent their work? As a young(er) woodworker, I welcome good tools at a reasonable cost. Though this hobby might be dominated by another generation, why make "cost" prohibit the next generation from the craft?
Nonetheless, I reread the blog above and agree with Chris re: the practice of a business purposely trying to confuse the consumer. That is wrong. But if a company, copies a decades old, much copied design at a cheaper cost, I’ll look at the quality and might purchase it, with a free conscience.
Matt
Chris,
I’m glad you view the world as you do and I am extremely thankful that you are an "honorable" mid-tier magazine writer in the Midwest.
Thank you.
Grant
Thanks Grant,
It’s funny that I’m still thinking about tis blog entry. Right now I’m in Charleston, S.C., visiting my father and I took a walk tonight past the slave market. And I thought: There’s an example of something that was totally legal and unethical.
Chris
Chris,
I agree that legality does not equate to being ethical. Nor do I believe that deceptive marketing techniques are ethical.
I guess my question is, what is your criteria on copying material? Can a company use modern metals to create recreations of Stanley vintage planes other than LN? Or is it the specific composition of which metals are used where on the plane, bronze vs. ductile iron?
But your slave market analogy brings up a bigger issue in my mind, the company/country we support that supports almost-slave like conditions across the ocean… By purchasing these copies, I guess we’re supporting low-income wages overseas versus higher income wages here in our country.
Matt
I don’t understand. The question’s posed to Robin Lee had nothing to do with copying anything. They were all about making a tool that competed with the Lie-Nielsen tools. The post essentially states that Lee Valley is purposely avoiding direct competition with Lie-Nielsen and then later says that Lie-Nielsen has purposely avoided competing with Lee Valley in other areas. Doesn’t this anti-competitive practice hurt the consumer? I am not talking about copying and neither did any of the original questions.
At the bottom of the post Chris provides links to a tool that has apparently (pretty obviously) been copied. This is a different issue entirely. I agree that inventors should be able to protect their designs but Lee Valley saying that it wouldn’t be fair to Lie-Nielsen if they introduces a lower priced tool that the Lie-Nielsen website states is "based on" the Stanley 750 chisels smells of collusion and is not fair to the consumer. Shouldn’t tool makers have to compete? Don’t we all lose if they don’t?
Kris