The Yale Free Press

Willy Wonka is not just for kids! Everyone knows him as a confectionary genius who is a little eccentric, enterprising and successful—but he could have easily been mediocre. There is a timely message about capitalism and intellectual property in the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with a humanitarian cherry on top that makes the amazing chocolatier even sweeter. This children’s tale is relevant to current issues of intellectual property (IP) theft taking place in internet security databases, computer operating systems, reality TV show concepts, and the RIAA. When it came to internal IP theft, Willy Wonka did not mess around, and others can learn from his success.

Everyone wanted a piece of Wonka’s pie when he became so innovative that other candy makers could not compete with their own wits, and the competition resorted to dirty dealings like trying to pay off Wonka’s workers for the secrets to his success. Wonka, a true capitalist, took matters into his own hands and fired all of his workers to protect his trade secrets. The public saw this as a drastic movie and believed the man’s paranoia had gotten the best of him. Yet when Wonka’s factory doors closed, to everyone’s surprise it continued to produce great candy and even bolder products. Wonka’s innovation and output grew substantially, all without any visible work.

It turned out that Wonka had outsmarted everyone and outsourced in a way which was both economically productive for him and humanitarian for his new workers. He employed the enigmatic Oompa-Loompas in his factory, creatures whom he rescued from monsters and employed in his factories. Wonka’s Oompa workers have an interesting evolutionary story: Roald Dahl’s first edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory explicitly referred to these Oompa- Loompas as African pygmies who were ravaged by war and destruction; the book was heralded as a Victorian humanist story. But during the 1970’s, Dahl was heavily criticized and called a racist. In his revision, Dahl kept the same idea, only making it more fantastical— the new Oompa-Loompas were little exotic creatures plucked from their monster-ravaged land and given asylum in Wonka’s factory in exchange for work.

And work they did, long and hard, at various tasks dependent upon skill. It was a simple exchange: Wonka needed workers he trust and the Oompa-Loompas needed a safe home. When both parties seek security, this is the best arrangement. If an Oompa-Loompa managed to get out of the factory and reveal a Wonka trade secret, he would be “deported” and sent back to the monsters. This brings new light to the term job security.

Let us modernize Dahl’s tale: a media distribution company wants to prevent movies and CDs from being stolen internally and placed on file-sharing networks and/or sold as bootlegs. This company realizes the only way to prevent workers from being offered fantastic sums of money for leaking a disc is to make sure the workers do not have the opportunity to be approached by any competition. One option would be to take in starving Nigerians or Sudanese war refugees, and offer them some type of indentured servitude on the condition of deportation for violation of their contract. Many technology-oriented businesses are outsourcing overseas and, according to the Outsourcing Institute, one of the reasons is because they want increased IP security.

With Microsoft employees, this sort of security can only be achieved by making the detriments of being dishonest outweigh the benefits offered by the competition. A confidentiality agreement only goes so far, and non-disclosure agreements have a history of failing (if you are threatened with a $5 million lawsuit for disclosing trade secrets and the competition is willing to pay you $10 million, which would you choose?). Money and the threat of job loss are not enough to secure valuable IP security, so the capitalist has to be more ruthless. Ruthlessness is not always bad; in Wonka’s case it did a lot of good.

In Dahl’s universe, the candy world is better off from Wonka’s distrust. If Wonka had not sealed off his factory and found the Oompa- Loompas, he would not have had the leisure and security to come up with his extraordinary ideas. If Bill Gates fired all his employees tomorrow and designed a completely internal operation, who could blame him? I for one would not hesitate to call him a hero. After all, what is good for Willy Wonka is good for America.

Kerri Price is a junior in Ezra Stiles College