15 minutes for a quote is old news. start with a quote from esurance and you could save money on car insurance in half the time. welcome to the modern world. esurance. backed by allstate. click or call. t it. "the wolf of wall street" was downloaded more than any other mother. >> piracy. that's where hollywood has a really big problem. >> i don't want to talk about leaks. it freaks me out. >> certain rights to creators of songs, movies books painting. the idea is -- >> the creation and proliferation of new ideas by providing a brief and limited period of exclusivity. >> even drug dealers understand the value of that. >> it's a brand name. like pepsi. that's a brand name. >> change the name on it? >> if he doesn't, the lawyers may come. >> you have stolen my client's. >> you could be sued and found liable for monetary damages.

>> and yet some of you watch my show on youtube. that's stealing. and that's our show tonight. and now john stossel. >> ideas can change the world. for most of human history, people suffered in miserable poverty, mainly because no one had thought of better ways to do things. then suddenly in just the last few hundred years, some new ideas made life better for billions. things like running water, the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, now the internet. we want people to keep coming up with new ideas, but there's a problem. why would you bother to spend years inventing something if other people could just steal your idea? they'd make the money you might not. >> let's say a guy invents a better light bulb. his price needs to cover not just the manufacturing costs but

also the cost of inventing the thing in the first place. now let's say a competitor starts manufacturing a competing copy. the competitor doesn't need to cover those development costs. so his version can be cheaper. the bottom line, original creation can't compete with the price of cost. >> that's the video made by filmmaker kirby ferguson. if original creations can't compete with copies inventors will invent fewer things. what could be done to address that unfair imbalance? >> in the united states, the introduction of copyrights and patents was intended to address this imbalance. copyrights cover media patents covered inventions. both aim to encourage the creation and proliferation of new ideas by providing a brief and limited period of exclusivity, a period where no one else can copy your work. >> brief? how brief? i wrote this book. how long until you can copy it? that time limit has changed over the years.

>> first in 1831 from 28 years to 42 years, then again in 1909 to 56 years. in 1976 through the lifetime of the author. and the lifetime of the author blus 7 plus 70 years. >> my lifetime plus 70 years that seems long. and it's wrong, says david kepsel. he says we should just get rid of all copyrights and patents. no, that's crazy, says lauren, who is an intellectual property law. lawyer. no copyright? no trademark? why would i write this if you could just rip it off? >> why did shakespeare write all those plays? why did he profit through putting his name on plays that were actually retellings of old stories? because you can make more? >> why? >> shakespeare did it without copyright. >> they may not have had a

copyright statute at the time, but people who pirated other people's plays were dealt with harshly. shakespeare, he would go after these people, sometimes try to shut down the sheeter. ertheater. it was copying. it was wrong. >> but how could he shut the theater down? go have thugs beat them up? >> utilitarianism. why will people do something if they don't get rewarded? it's also a moral issue, john. someone who creates something has a moral right to protect what he has created just as someone -- just as a farmer has a right to land that he has mixed his labor with. this is a natural rights issue. >> the natural rights are those that are founded in the nature of the property being scarce. when i hold something, it is to the exclusion of someone else. ideas are not like that. weather when we have laws that allow me to monopolize the expression of

an idea necessarily inhibits someone else's free expression. >> what about something that's both an idea and a physical thing like a new drug? it costs these drug companies a billion dollars to get it through government. somebody could just copy it, they wouldn't do it. >> pharmaceuticals are a special problem because there's a great deal of regulation already built up with the research and development of the drugs. you have to go through clinical trials. but we see in other fields like software where the r&d costs are much lower and coming down all the time. that people are actually opting out of the copyright and patent system. >> how do they make money? >> they make money by the strength of their name and product. they do it like other competitive markets s products on the marketplace do selling and competing with others as the free market is supposed to work. >> it's not always clear how modern life would work without copyrights and trademarks. but there's one area of life where government does not

enforce. illegal drugs. and yet intellectual property still exists. in this gangster movie denzel washington is upset his drug has been watered down. >> it's a brand name like pepsi. they don't know that eastern more than they know the chairman of general mills. when you chop my dope down and then you call it blue magic, that is trademark infringement. >> you want me to change the name? >> i would insist that you change the name. >> fine by me. i'll call it red magic. >> is that how it's supposed to work? he'll persuade people? >> if someone wants to copy shakespeare's plays and market them as their own -- >> stossel. >> you've got to deal with a couple problems. one, the audience is going to know you're ripping off shakespeare, your reputation.

they work in the private market. you don't need a government to come in and enforce them. >> what about music? i often try to use music on this program, but sometimes i'm told you can't use that. we don't have the rights. actor nick offerman did this parody of how the music copyright system works. ♪ not every opinion is rendered ♪ >> stop the audio. shut it down now. >> who the hell are you? >> i'm an intellectual property attorney, and you have stolen my client's melody. >> so lawrence, that's what you do? >> i do that kind of thing in court, not in someone's workshop. >> to you these laws are reasonable, clear enough for most people? >> well like all laws, they require tailoring from time to time, reasonable people can disagree, for example, in how long the term of a copyright should be. >> the rules are confusing and they often open people up to lawsuits. here's one example. >> in 1981 george harrison lost a $1.5 million case for

subconsciously copying the doo-wop hit "she's so fine" in his ballad. >> subconsciously copying? are you kidding me? >> you know, in that case he admitted he had made a mistake and he tried to settle it before it went to trial. the tune was well known. he said it was subconscious, but whether it was or wasn't he did not have a right to use someone else's tune. the fact that he is a great creative person in his own right didn't give him the right to infringe on another people's creative products. >> and how would they make money if anybody could just copy any song? >> they are making money through doing what they've been doing for ages, by doing performances, by hoping that people will buy their products. and in fact, they do. you know, i live in mexico city. and i can walk out my door, go 200 yards and buy a pirated copy of anything i want. and yet box office receipts in

mexico city go up every year. why? because the people who can afford to theaters, the people who can afford to buy the original products choose to. >> you know, that's all well and good if you have a famous entertainer, say a lady gaga or tony bennett. but how does an entertainer become famous in the first place? # the reason people will pay money to go and see one of their performances is because intellectual property law allowed them to become famous in the first place. >> david? >> i don't think that's necessarily true. you see a lot of independent performers now making money through doing live gigs in smaller venues and then becoming famous there too. it's not always copyright law that enables that. sometimes it's also making good music. >> let's assume copyright protection is a good thing. what's not a good thing is that special interest groups then lobby politicians to tilt the law in their favor. and my former employer, disney, did that. even after making big bucks from stories like "pinocchio" that

they got for free. >> reporter: stories like snow white, pinocchio and alice in wonderland were all taken from the public domain. but when it came time for disney's copyright to expire, they lobbied that the term of copyright extended. >> extended from 75 to 95 years. their first movie would now be free to copy. if they hadn't gotten their special deal but now they control "snow white" until the year 2032. lawrence, that's not right. and i don't know that -- you know, 70 years after my death, i should own this thing? >> they don't have the right to the story for 95 years. what they have a right to is their expression of it. the story of "snow white" is an ancient german myth, and anybody -- >> i could do a cartoon where she's singing and -- >> you can do a story of any kind you want that involves a bitter queen a mirror, a poison

apple just as leonard bernstein -- not for those basic elements. just as shakespeare, to get back to shakespeare for a minute could not have sued leonard bernstein and steven sonheim for coming up with "west side story." >> you say it's cronyism to get it expanded. >> it doesn't mean they're not going to use their -- >> bully lawyers to scare people. >> of course. that's exactly what happens. and that happens in the patent industry, too. >> thank you, david, lawrence. to join this debate, please follow me to @fbnstossel and use #ideas or likemy facebook page so you can post on my wall. coming up, how some magicians manage to protect their trade secrets without suing people. and what i do about people who rip me off. rip me off.

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and you come up with a cool new magic trick? you might patent your trick but the secret would be out there. how does a magician protect his create ufsh creative work? in a moment i will ask this magician. >> my name is rick lax. welcome to vertigo. >> rick lax invented this trick where a deck of cards seems to float in the air. soon someone in russia showed the trick on the internet and was trying to make money by selling the secret behind it. [ speaking foreign language ] rick lax joins us now. so this russian guy ripped you off? >> he sure did and he made some money doing it. >> how'd he make money? >> he charged people for this video that he made explaining how to do my trick. >> so to protect his vertigo trick, rick put on a disguise and made this fake exposure video which claims his anti-gravity trick is done with tape.

>> the first thing right there. you see that? tape. >> and at the end of the video he takes off his disguise and explains that he was conning you. >> it's a secret to vertigo. you're not going to find it here. no, you're not going to find it here or really anywhere. on youtube, i don't think. if you really want to learn how to do it, you do have to get the dvd. >> so you try to make money selling dvds explaining it. >> that's right. and i made that video not because i wanted to but because i had to. over 50,000 people watched that video alone. and my fake exposure video where it started off if you are watching it, you're a magician, and you think you're going to get the secret for free and you say is it done with tape and it's not really done with tape.

and at the end it's me and you find out this isn't how it's done but i can see there is a demand for these exposure videos because 50,000 people watched mine. if you were to google rick lax how to do vertigo you would find hundreds of videos with tens of thousands of hits and some will be real exposure videos. those are videos where the magicians really tell you how it's done and some will be fake ones like the one you just saw. >> so why not go to government copyright, patent, own it, sue people who do it? >> it's hard for us magicians to do that. if we want to patent a magic trick, in some cases, we can. if there is a special device that lets us do the trick, we can take out a patent but patents are publicly searchable so everyone is going to know how it's done. so we don't like that. >> here's a magician in a mask that reveals secrets behind magic. >> this jerk.

all right all right, let's show it. great. >> one, two, three. presto. scarves are gone. how did he do it? what you don't see is that the scarves are hooked to a short piece of fishing line. >> he had a whole tv show doing this. but you say the community of magicians without getting law involved punished him? >> yeah, we exorcised him from the community. he was a vegas magician named valentino. he will not perform anywhere in america. >> he doesn't get work? >> definitely not. because no one wants to associate with him. once you share the secrets with the laymen we're nervous to share our secrets with you because we're afraid you are going to turn around, share it with everyone else. >> in some ways you are like coca-cola, you have a trade secret that you don't want to write down for people to steal. you just want to keep it secret. and coca-cola has done that, thomas's english muffins kentucky fried chicken. wd-40.

google's search algorithm. none of this is legally registered anywhere. >> that's right. and the reason they don't legally register it is because patents and copyrights, those only work for a limited period of time. but when you keep something a trade secret, you can keep it a trade secret for 100 years and coca-cola has done that. >> some people did allegedly steal the secret and went to pepsi with it. and pepsi went to the fbi and told coke. >> that's right. and these people got punished. i don't know if they realized that going into it, but stealing a trade secret like that it is not just a civil infraction. this is now a federal crime. so they got in some real trouble for doing that. >> the rare magician who copyrighted a trick is penn of penn and teller. he has a trick where he cuts the shadow of a rose and somehow makes the actual rose petals fall. he registered the act with the u.s. copyright office 30 years ago. recently someone in belgium posted a video of that trick

that he called the rose and her shadow. i don't know if he grabbed it from the copyright office. but he offered to reveal the secret behind it for $3,000. teller sued him, and as you said, last year he won $15,000. so that's the reason to copyright. >> yeah, except for right now, teller might be the exception rather than the rule because even in the ruling the judge said i'm going to give this one to you but so you know, you can't copyright a magic trick. i'm only going to give it to you because the choreography surrounding the trick, that you can have the copyright on. the pantomime that accompanies the trick. so us magicians are trying to figure out how broad is this ruling. is it only going to apply to teller because there is so much choreography in his trick or might it apply to the rest of us too? we don't know. >> but it appears can you patent the shtick but not the trick. >> we'll go with that. >> thank you, rick. coming up, we go undercover

to buy counterfeit merchandise. will we get caught? merchandise, will we get [ male announcer ]

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have you listened to music on the internet without paying for it? lots of people do. this upsets musicians like taylor swift. >> it freaks me out. i will have a meltdown on the show. >> college students download music all the time. but there's a name for what they're doing. it's called -- >> downloading songs off the internet illegally. >> and sometimes the music makers take action. a boston university student joel tannenbaum copied 30 songs and shared them on the web. the recording industry association sued him and a jury ordered him to pay $675,000. >> $22,500 for each song he downloaded. >> and that's not right according to the author of

"against intellectual property." why is it not right? >> the internet has given us a tool to learn, to copy. this is what humans have been doing for thousands of years. this is how society advances and how humanity grows. copyright law basically censors free speech, preventing people from sharing, from me mixing. >> without it people will say and mix and produce less. >> that is actually not true. today we have piracy that is widespread and most people want don't make a dime from their works. most people want their ideas to get out there. the danger to artists and people who want their name out there is obscurity, not piracy. piracy is a compliment. >> so i should be allowed to pirate movies off the internet? >> well i think piracy is the wrong term just like the idea of the term stealing is the wrong term. when you copy information you are not taking anything you are copying their ideas. they still have them. piracy is what they used to do when they would raid ships and take things.

>> and the movie industry complains all the time. >> the wolf is ripped off. "the wolf of wall street" was downloaded illegally more than any other movie in 2014. others are frozen, robocop, gravity and the hobbit. >> piracy that's where hollywood has a really big problem, and they eye to eye with so many conservatives. conservatives respect private property. >> you don't respect private property. it's not being stolen. it's been copied. >> well, actually, i believe in private property as a libertarian even stronger than most conservatives. and that is why i think patent law and copyrights are a bad idea. in fact, patents -- >> that's confusing. >> patents expire after 17 years, roughly. copyrights expire a long time later. as you noted already. property rights don't expire. so it's here clear that patents and copyrights are not property rights. >> let's make this personal. i'm frankly sometimes happy when i see my show is all over the internet. my goal is to get the ideas out.

but it's a conflict because i also know that why would fox pay me to do this show if they didn't own it and get to make money from it? you steal this show by watching it on places like youtube may not think about the costs that go into making the show happen. it's not just my salary. i have seven producers who do research, book the guests, have editors who cut the video. there's a makeup person, hairstyleist hairstylist, a studio stage manager, the director the cost of the car service that picks up the guests like you, stefan. how would it happen if they couldn't own the show? protect it? >> you certainly should have the right to have -- it's moral for people to give attribution credit. if a youtube video is taken there's nothing wrong -- you have to tell where it came from. copying is a different matter altogether. when you put information out there, you should be complimented by the fact that

people are copying your show. it shows sha you're popular. it shows they want to hear your ideas. the more copies the more popular you are. movie studios make money selling tickets. now they can make money from selling dvds. they can sell money from rentals. youtube has its own channel. they put up a warning video. >> everybody is looking forward to the video from lumpy. russell is a huge fan. >> but youtube warns him. >> hey, russell, you didn't create that video. you just copied someone else's content. you can be sued. and found liable for monetary damages. if youtube finds you're a repeat offender, you'll get banned for life. >> so sounds like you get punished if people complain you are stealing stuff. >> you will. and it's even getting worse. one of the dangers of copyright is it is used by the state to regulate the internet. in fact,

the sopa legislation was defeated a couple years ago which would have defeated piracy by surveillance on the internet. and internet source providers have agreed to adopt this six strikes and you're out rule which is like a private out of the court system with no due process which could get you banned from the internet for life. >> not from the internet. >> yes. >> it gets you banned from youtube. >> no, from the internet. >> has it happened? >> not yet. but the rules are pretty new. it's a danger. >> so you're a patent lawyer. >> i am a patent lawyer. >> so you are trying to argue yourself out of a job. >> right, just like an oncologist is trying to cure cancer and put himself out of a job or an attorney who works for the aclu or defends people against the hideous drug war, he's hoping to end the drug war, and maybe he has to find honest work then. >> good for you. thank you, stefan. for those of you who would like to legally watch shows of mine, that maybe you missed, fox business does put them on the web two weeks after we air.

you can get to the website by going to johnstossel.com. coming up, why it would cost me big if i would sing happy birthday on this show. and next we go undercover to try to buy some counterfeit goods. try to buy some counterfeit

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for a closer feeling to natural teeth. fixodent. and forget it. of all the industries i've covered as a consumer reporter one of the biggest ripoffs is fashion. this dress sells for $1200. these shoes, $1400. this purse is priced at $2500. are you kidding me? who pays that amount of money for a purse? i can walk outside my apartment and buy a bag that looks like that for 20 bucks. and, actually, this one is the high-end knockoff.

it costs us $200. we got it when we went shopping with hidden cameras. >> louis vuitton. >> the producer bought that bag here in chinatown where people sell all kinds of merchandise. >> everything. >> is it real? >> rolex. ladies, what do you need? >> he claimed he was selling authentic stuff. >> let me give you a peek. what one do you want? >> some people admitted their products were not real. >> it's not real. real one is too much money. >> one hustler said if we want the real quality brand-name stuff we need to follow him and meet with this woman in mcdonald's. >> on her phone she showed my producer a bunch of supposedly authentic $1,000 louis vuitton bags. >> real leather? real louis vuitton? >> which she said she would sell for $200? >> when do i pay you? >> cash, later.

>> then 15 minutes back on the street, the bag appeared. >> my knockoff. >> and that's how i got this. the counterfeit fashion industry is big business. chris brigman knows about that. he wrote "the knockoff economy" how imitation sparks innovation. that makes it sound like this illegal activity is a good thing. >> well there's some good that comes out of it. the presence of knockoffs democratizes fashion. it allows people in the u.s. to look good and stylish. people who cannot afford $1,000 for the real louis vuitton bag. that is the cheapest bag they sell and that is $1,000. they sell bags that are $25,000 on the louis vuitton website. knockoffs democratize the availability of these items. now it would be bad if it hurt the branded companies if it deprived them of customers they would otherwise have. and i can tell you that virtually no one who buys the

fake bag for $200 down on canal street, and that's a pretty good fake. that is a well-done fake, no one buying those bags is going to buy the $1,000 original or the $25,000 luxe louis vuitton bags. >> you make it sound like the high-priced companies are all in on the scam. they know it's going to happen but they're not getting money from the knockoff bag. >> they are not getting money from the knockoff bag, but they're not being harmed either. so the people who are in the market for the real louis vuitton who have all that cash to burn, they're still going to go out because they want the status that the real louis vuitton confers and they want the shopping experience and the wonderful louis vuitton flagship store and how it pampers them. this is what they want. this is what they get. the knockoff has no discern iblgible effect on the behavior of those folks, and those are the folks that louis vuitton cares about. >> one blogger wrote that cheap stores like forever 21 and urban outfitters don't allow for the creativity of the original creator to be an knowledged. >> i think if you look out there

into the world and see how the fashion industry works over the last 50 years since the end of world war ii, the fashion industry in the u.s. has boomed. pretty much uninterruptedly boomed. all that time, knockoffs have been legal. so copying in the united states helps the fashion industry. it helps to signal to people that a trend has occurred when a fashion is widely copied it tells us there is a trend. we buy into the trend. because we want to be in fashion. >> more information. >> more information for people and they buy into the trend. when there is too much copying it signals that the trend is starting to be over. it's overdone. the fashion forward among us jump off and we jump onto the new trend. the copying helps fuel it. this is good for the fashion industry and good for consumers and it's good for us all. >> even for the fashion backward like me? >> well, the fashion backward benefit as well. the price of clothing hasn't gone up in the last quarter century continue it's stayed about the same except for the price of clothing at the very top. the louis vuitton and the prada

that is rocketing upward. the rich are paying more. the rest of us are getting more for less. >> the u.s. customs service, always eager to make themselves more important they say the black market for fake handbags, shoes and purses funds other crime rings, and it's a big threat to people. >> more than a billion dollars in counterfeits are seized by customs and border protection annually as federal agents crack down on what some here call the crime of the century. >> with the explosion of the internet right now you can buy anything that appears to be legitimate. you think you have a small savings. you think you're getting the real product at a discounted price only to find out that it's a counterfeit. >> the crime of the century, they call it. >> i'm not sure it's the crime of the century. more than that, it's just true in the world that organized crime has its finger in every pie they can make money. either legal or illegal. if we want to get after organized crime get after organized crime. the counterfeiting issue is a more or less a red herring. >> the international chamber of commerce claims 2.5 million jobs

are lost because of fake products. >> the international chambers of commerce figures are worth zero. and there's just no basis for them. they keep repeating them as if they are a fact. the government, unfortunately, fbi and other agencies of government have picked them up as if they are fact that doesn't make them true. there's a lot of good that's created. there are a lot of people in business who are making money and they wouldn't be otherwise. so i think in terms of its total economic effect, it's a wash. >> you do, though, agree, that if it comes to things like pharmaceutical drugs or airplane parts, this is a real threat? >> god, yes. i don't want airplanes crashing because of fake parts. i don't want people dying because of fake drugs. >> we're just talking fashion. >> yeah, nobody died because of a fake handbag. and i will note that a lot of the government's efforts in this area are directed not at airplane parts and pharmaceuticals but at handbags. >> finally, chris says another surprising way to expand your brain is to think

the knockoff economy is to think about charles dickens. did you read "the christmas carol" or "great expectations" or "tale of two cities"? these books have sold millions of copies but at the time book sellers in america were not required to pay dickens a dime. >> when the united states was a developing economy it refused to sign treaties and had no protection for foreign creators. charles dickens famously complained about the piracy book market calling it a horrible thing that scoundrel book sellers should grow rich. >> and you say he still made out. >> dickens made out. when he visited the united states on a lecture tour he played to standing room only crowd. the equivalent of millions of dollars. in today's currency. >> because they could buy and read cheap books and -- >> they fell in love with him. so they went to see him. at his death a significant portion of his estate came from that trip to america. in that period

america became one of the most literate nations on earth and of it became literate in part because books were cheap. it helped us develop be the world power we are today. that came from the absence of copyright. >> thank you, chris. coming un, who owns a joke? how do comedians deal with joke stealers? and how do ideal with people who steal my brand? >> welcome to "20/20." i'm john stossel. >> i'm john stossel. i'm john stossel. >> i'm john stossel. huh, fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. everybody knows that. well, did you know words really can hurt you? what...? jesse don't go! jesse...no! i'm sorry daisy, but i'm a loner. and a loner gotta be alone. heee yawww! geico.

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have you heard this joke? why is six afraid of seven? because seven eight nine. get it? he ate nine? i didn't make that up. we all repeat jokes we've heard before. does that make me a joke stealer? i guess so. i don't know who thought up most of the jokes i tell. what does this mean for professional comedians? what do they do if someone steals their jokes? comedian doug stanhope says comedians just work this out. i ask him about this because he is a libertarian. here's a sample of his work. >> they say if you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day.

but if you teach a man to fish, then he's got to get a fishing license and you couldn't cook the fish because you need a permit for an open flame and then the health department starts asking you about where are you going to dump the scales and the guts? >> a libertarian comedian. doug joins us now. you don't need government to protect your jokes? >> no. comedy is a really good self-policing art form. if you go to an open mic and want to try to get into this business, if you're stealing someone's jokes, you will be outed and publicly shamed and run out of town. >> and yet robin williams was known as a joke stealer. >> huge. milton berle and robin williams. are probably the two legendary -- >> they weren't run out of town. >> no, there's the anomaly that slipped through the cracks. there's legendary stories from

the comedy store in l.a. about robin williams coming into the showroom and someone would put him up against the wall by the throat and his manager would write a check for stealing jokes. but, yeah, there's very few that get through and they're labeled. people wouldn't go on stage when robin williams was in the room after he was branded with that scarlet letter of joke thief. >> in 2006, comedian dane cook was accused of stealing jokes from comedian louis k.c. he invited him on his show. >> 2006 was the greatest year of my entire life. i had a double platinum comedy album, first one ever to exist. that should have been my triumph, and i enjoyed it, louie, for maybe two months. two months before it started to suck because everything i read about me was about how i stole jokes from you, which i didn't. >> i kind of think you did.

>> so louis c.k. has him on his own show? >> yeah. now, louis c.k. is a gentleman, and he's always been above the fray in these things. a lot of people did gang up on dane cook on that one. and louie handled it like a sportsman. he didn't -- he didn't antagonize it. he didn't fan the flames. and when he did have dane cook on that show i thought it was brilliant on both sides. >> some comedians do lose work because they're accused of stealing jokes. joe rogan went on stage to interrupt a routine by carlos men mencia and accused mencia of stealing jokes from many other comedians. >> someone steals a riff from a song, that's stealing. [ bleep ] >> [ bleep ] but i don't. >> mencia found it tougher to

get work after that? >> that pretty much destroyed him. mencia was on the top of his game at that point. he was at a comedy central show. he was selling out theaters all over the country, and almost immediately after that went viral, it destroyed his career. it brought him down to my level. that's how bad -- if i'm doing the wednesday, he's doing the thursday at the same rotten club. >> well thank you, doug stanhope. we'll now raise you up to higher levels. coming up have you brushed your teeth with crust toothpaste? do you use arm&hatchet baking soda? do you buy coffee at sunbucks coffee shop? i'll explain when we come back. i'll explain when we come back.

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♪ happy birthday to you ♪ ♪ hap -- ♪ i can't sing the rest of the song. if i did, it would cost fox lots of money because the rights to "happy birthday" are owned by warner music. jeesh, they bought the rights in 1998, and now people pay them about $2 million a year to use the song and movies and tv shows. intellectual property laws have teeth. one guy thinks he can get around the law by changing small things. he made this youtube clip which has been watched half a million

times. ♪ happy birthday to you ♪ >> cute, but lawyers tell me that probably does not make this video legal. one thing, though, that does make copying legal is parody. if you take someone's work but change it to make a joke about it, that's not a copyright violation, and that's good for intellectual freedom but not such a good thing for people like me because people make videos like these. >> welcome to "20/20." i'm john stossel. >> i'm john stossel. >> give me a break. >> you want a break? you're going to get a break. i'm going to give you a break right now. [ bleep ] >> stupid and there's nothing i can do about that. and there's practically nothing any of us can do about intellectual property violations. in china, recognizable american brands. they think it will give their products credibility so various

stores will sell you sunbucks coffee, kidtids laundry soap unbelievable this is not butter arm & hatchet baking soda or king burger or this take off kentucky fried chicken. but instead of the colonel, president obama apparently fries the birds. after all that eating, you can brush your teeth with crust toothpaste. that's what happens in china. in america thomas jefferson once opposed copyright laws. ideas are like candlelight, he wrote. he receives an idea from me receives instruction himself without lessening mine. he receives light without darkening me. it's a good point. jefferson later backed off that a bit. he said he just opposed the old english standard which was

ownership forever, and he did support very limited idea of ownership, maybe 14 years. i don't know where the line should be but when ideas are free, creativity blossoms. i like how journalist matt ridley put it. ideas have sex with each other and then they give birth to new often better ideas. that helps us all. some libertarians on my show tonight said it would be better if america had no copyright or trademark protection. and they made some good points, but i have to wonder would i have written these books if publishers hadn't offered me money? i doubt it. they gave me money only because they knew that no one was allowed to just copy the book. i also assume i get paid by fox only because you cable subscribers and advertisers pay for this programming. maybe i do this for nothing. i like doing it. maybe. but i wouldn't work as hard, and i'd balk at paying for the cameras and all the expensive things that go into making tv

so i'm glad we have some intellectual property laws. that's our show. see you next week. intellectual property laws. that's our tonight on "red eye." >> coming up on "red eye" will the new row boat gladiators ever live up to the originals? and does the president think it is time for joe biden to finish the dora the explorer puzzle he started six years ago? >> that's what we should do. let's get that done this year. >> and finally does the vice president have a plan to finish the puzzle? >> we have to do two things. put these last two pieces together. >> none of these stories on "red eye" tonight. >> and now let's welcome our guests. well, like an exotic wine she needs to breathe. otherwise she is bitter and a bit off. i am here