I am strongly convinced that the possession of ideas and creations of the intellect is not possible. In my opinion, only physical things can be possessed, that is, things that are limited, that is, that can only be in one place. The power or the freedom to do with the object what one wants corresponds to the concept of possession. This does not mean, however, that one must expose everything openly. It is ultimately the difference between proprietary solutions, where the “construction manual” is kept to oneself, and the open source philosophy, where this source is accessible to everyone.
As the title says, I would oppose this thesis to your arguments and hope that together we can rethink and improve our positions. Please keep in mind that this can be an enrichment for all, so we discuss with each other and not against each other ;)
Yes I do think it’s better. If it were up to me, copyrights and patents would last forever, and not just for 100 years (or less). What Tolkien created is his and his alone, and he and his family should continue to profit from it for all time, it’s his creation to do with as he pleases. Why on earth should it not work like that? Why should society take away then product of someone’s hard work and creation? That sounds like a horrible, North Korea society. If an author wants to put their work in the public domain for all to have, they can still do so.
As somebody already told you in another post, in a world without IP protection, people would just jealously guard their secrets and their secrets would die with them. Tremendous human genius would be lost rather than shared with all of humanity, because nobody would ever be inclined to share anything. And if creators couldn’t make a living, you’re talking about a world utterly devoid of creativity. We wouldn’t have things like Tolkien, Harry Potter, Star Wars, if creators didn’t exclusively own the rights to their creation so they could profit from them, because what would be the incentive to create then? In any economic system, people acts as greedy, rational agents, so rewarded and ownership rights must exist or there is zero motivation to create.
Like all human laws, patents and copyrights can be woefully abused if people and laws allow for abusive behaviour, such that they stifle innovation rather than help it. But this isn’t a problem specific to IP itself, humans are just awful creatures who will abuse any form of law if they can (unions for example, can also be horrific, just look at the USA police union). We could improve laws to get rid of things like patent trolls without discarding the concept of IP entirely.
Taking the law at its word and dancing right up to the edge of it is not “abusing” it
Yes it is, it has to do with abusing the spirit of a law. Patent law exists to protect innovation so as to encourage it. Patent trolls do the opposite.
Similar laws which were designed to allow people in a community some measure of voice in that community have been abused for years to enact Nimbyism. That’s also abusing the spirit of the law.
Humans are just awful cunts.
Designing a legal system is hard. It is not immoral to conduct such stress tests on a legal system
Sure it is, because they’re not doing it to stress test but to rent-seek. They’re not coming from an altruistic place of helping build a better system, but from greed, and a desire to earn money without doing much work.
I’m really sorry but I just can’t let these arguments pass. First of all, we have to realise that this is all hypothetical and there are pros and cons to everything. The post you refer to takes the historical context as a basis and gives an example of how knowledge could be lost through this proposed change. But there are just as many positive examples from much earlier times (antiquity, ancient Egypt, the stone age) that also oragnised into advanced civilisations without any IP only through cooperation and trade.
On the subject of authorship: I can understand that people want to be paid for their work and I can also understand why people prefer to rely on IP in order to demand this money for themselves during their lifetime. But how do you justify licensing beyond that? Who benefits from it: the creator who has put in the effort and work for it or some lazy descendants who enrich themselves from the work of their predecessors?
That is the sole right of the creator/author to determine. Many creators do stipulate in their wills that upon their death, all their works go into the public domain. Others leave it to their descendants to profit from. But the point is, it’s the right of the owner to do with it what they will, just as it’s your right as a homeowner to decide what happens to your house/property when you die.
The only place I can see room for looser IP laws is in the medical domain, so that important live saving medicines aren’t locked away behind patents and price gouging. However, I also fully understand why there are strong patents in medicine: because drug research is incredibly expensive and time consuming, and there needs to be an incentive to do it by private companies, and patents create that incentive because they know if they find some wonder drug, they can recoup their research costs and make a profit too. If there was no IP protection in medicine, then there would be no incentive for private companies to do it, so the government would have to do it all (maybe that is a better system overall, not sure).
Like I said before, IP laws could definitely do with some serious revision to bring them up to date for the 21st century, and remove things like patent trolling, but in my opinion, it’s ludicrous to say we should do away with them entirely and live in some kind of IP-less society.