- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter (now X) and Square (now Block), sparked a weekend’s worth of debate around intellectual property, patents, and copyright, with a characteristically terse post declaring, “delete all IP law.”
X’s current owner Elon Musk quickly replied, “I agree.”
That would just ensure that no one ever commits resources to developing something new…
It’ll affect it, but it won’t stop it. This is a good question to bring up though.
I design medical devices. IP is incredibly important in this process to protect our R&D investment in the current system. If IP didn’t exist, we’d protect that through other means like obfuscation of function.
Also if IP didn’t exist, I could design devices that are so much better at healing people. So much of what I do is restricted because someone else has 30 years left on what they patented.
R&D is expensive. Just because you see what someone else did, doesn’t mean you can easily replicate it.
In short: if your goal is pure profit, yeah removing IP probably hurts this a little. If your goal is producing the best product, then get rid of it.
I think the best solution would be a much shorter exclusionary period for patents.
Obfuscating how things work and trade secrets mean some knowledge is never shared. The ideal behind the patent system is that information is made public but protected for a limited time. The system has strayed from the ideal, but there is still a need for it.
Patents in the US and most countries expire 20 years after filing or 17 years after issuing. It’s not 30 years.
Capitalism stifles innovation
Cory Doctorow has made a pretty convincing argument that in your real specifically, all designs should be open source. That way, if a company goes bankrupt or simply stops supporting a device, like (say) an implant that allows them to see, or a pacemaker, or whatever, they can pursue repairs without the help of the OEM.
Open source is effectively no different than public domain in this circumstance. You don’t have less rights
If they didn’t patent it, that technology never would have existed in the first place for you to steal from.
100% agreed on that account.
“A little”? If there’s no IP you just pay a janitor or an employee a million bucks to send you all the information and documentation and you manufacture the product yourself and undercut the company actually engineering the product so they can never be profitable.
Like, this all seems very obvious to me…
Oh gee, a wildly incorrect assumption
Oh gee, a rational contradiction supported with evidence.
People made stuff before patents existed. In many cases there were certain people and groups that were sought out because they simply did things better than others who made the same things.
Knowing how someone else makes something doesn’t mean you can make it as well as the other person. Making quality goods is the same as cooking meals, the people and techniques are far more important than the designs.
People also didn’t make stuff before patents existed. That’s why they exist.
Not necessarily, but often you can. You also don’t have to, you just have to make it cheaper, which you can because you are benefitting from someone else’s investment.
What didn’t they make?
How many restaurants make fries? How many companies make a drink called cola? Are they all identical?
Why do they keep making making those prodicts when they aren’t covered by patents?
I don’t know. They didn’t make them.
So you are assuming they didn’t make them for reasons that didn’t exist at the time.
Ok.
No. I’m assuming that they didn’t make them based on simple and rational thought processes that I’ve already outlined several times.
Does the fact that the richest billionaires in the world all want to get rid of them not concern you at all?
The fact we’re not all still using oldawan industry proves you false
…no? It doesn’t.
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People famously invented nothing before copyright law.
No no no the world has always worked the way my flawed ideology requires!!!
The internet famously didn’t exist before copyright law. People also famously steal all IP in China.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Request_for_Comments
Your choice example of technology to support IP laws is… something that was created publically and is a collection of open, public standards 🤦🤦🤦 do you think the internet is patented…? By who??? Lmao
The internet is literally the peak example that proves IP laws are unnecessary for innovation and actually inhibits it. And yes, good observation that IP laws predate the internet. They are antiquated by it and no longer relevant in a post-internet world.
No 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️ you’re intentionally misrepresenting my statement.
So here’s your chance to clarify your statement and represent it the way you intended
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That’s why the Sistine Chapel has the little © 1512 painted in the corner
Did you not notice that almost the entire realm of technology runs on open source software largely written by volunteers? Yes your laptop may run a proprietary piece of software but not the servers it talks to, your phone, your apps, the cash register at the store, the computer chip in your kids toys etc…
Do you not notice that those volunteers have bills to pay and need jobs and income from somewhere? The world doesn’t run on goodwill.
So… what, are you denying that open source software exists because people have to pay bills…?
The point is every business cannot be a volunteer organization. And those companies that build that sort of infrastructure are supported by larger, proprietary companies.
Yet they did it anyway, my point is about the power of our intrinsic motivation to create, not our obvious need for food and shelter etc…
That’s only true of the too few people that control too much resources
Huh?
The large majority of resources and facilities are owned by a small minority of wealthy individuals whose only goal is making money. People with more interest and passion in the field in question would continue to innovate as long as they had the resources to do so.
But…they don’t. And if you removed IP law then they still wouldn’t…
this isn’t the only option but it’s recent and relevant
I’ll have to look at that later.
Read Debt by David Graeber.
Instead of explaining what you mean, you’re just going to casually suggest they read a roughly 500 page book and hope that clears it up for them?
Yes.
No.
Not necessarily? You’d retain first-to-market advantages, particularly where implementation is capital-heavy - and if that’s not enough you could consider an alternative approach to rewarding innovation such as having a payout or other advantage for individuals or entities which undertake significant research and development to emerge with an innovative product.
I think the idea that nobody would commit to developing anything in the absence of intellectual property law is also maybe a bit too cynical? People regularly do invest resources into developing things for the public domain.
At the very least, innovations developed with a significant amount of public funding - such as those which emerge from research universities with public funding or collaborative public-private endeavours at e.g. pharmaceutical companies - should be placed into the public domain for everybody to benefit from, and the copyright period should be substantially reduced to something more like five years.
Felt like it was pretty clearly hyperbolic.
People who work in public domain also need jobs to sustain their ability to do so.
Yes, but sometimes producing for the public domain is their job. Sponsorships, grants, and other funding instruments exist for people who do work which is committed to the public domain.
Which is paid for most often by proprietary companies. Take a look at the OBS webpage.
Not strictly true, if we’re talking about pharmaceuticals or other types of trade information, it would lead us back to a world of fiercely guarded corporate secrets. Here’s your medicine drug, but we won’t tell you anything about how its made or whats in it.
Right, because no one ever does anything for reasons other than money. You definitely get paid to clean up the neighborhood park or help your buddy move right?
Of course they do. What they don’t do is spend millions of dollars in R&D with no assurance that it won’t be stolen and duplicated by someone else who then sells the same product for a quarter of the price…
You’re right, no one spends millions of dollars in R&D without expecting to earn a profit from it…
They spend hundreds of billions instead.
…that’s the government
…and that’s moving the goalposts.
In my initial comment I said ‘no one’, and your first reply did not narrow the scope. I even said ‘no one’ again in my reply and you did not narrow the scope then either. So the standard was ‘no one does this’, except I’ve now shown an example of someone who does, so trying to qualify that now by adding some new arbitrary standard is just moving the goalposts. If the government does it then the fact that no one does it is false, isn’t it?
I didn’t move anything, you’re just playing stupid semantics games to win internet points. I have no interest in such vapid arguments.
Nor the more substantial argument I was making, it seems, since you didn’t seem to take the time to understand it. Fair enough, I can respect the ability to walk away from a discussion you don’t have a counter-argument for even if you don’t seem to have the ability to admit it.
Nobody does anything anymore and we’ll all just die. Gotcha.
Yes that’s totally what I said.
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