Are there countries without copyright laws?

I agree with Guy Lewis - what matters is not the laws but their enforcement. During the 18th and 19th centuries (and even somewhat into the 20th) the US had good copyright laws and completely failed to enforce them. UK and European publishers of books, art, and even early silent movies complained bitterly as people in the US just freely reproduced and sold obvious duplicates of (copyrighted) continental material.

In the late 20th century the situation was reversed with IP owners in the US complaining bitterly that China refused to enforce its own IP laws as well as international treaties. The result was that you could walk down streets in both major Chinese cities and in US as well and find Chinese-made duplicates of movies (first VCR cassettes then later CDs and DVDs) music, software, and physical goods that had been imported or smuggled into the US.

Today the situation has changed and other countries (e.g. Vietnam) get complaints from China because these other countries don't enforce such laws and so people there make copies of Chinese IP.

The fact that this pattern has continually repeated itself throughout centuries has led some scholars to argue that weak or no enforcement of IP laws is a necessary prerequisite to the development of such industries locally. In effect, Hollywood would never have gotten started without those early American movie pirates; ditto New York publishers. Today we see many successful Chinese software makers that in the past had associations with illegal software copying in that country.

This is where I disagree with Jai Parimi's posted cartoon. History argues that without these laws, industries flourish. Indeed there are entire industries today (e.g. fashion) where wholesale copying is the core of the business. Without style setting, seasonal trends, and trend-following plus variation there might not be a fashion industry at all.

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