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 ;)

  • @trias10
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    11 year ago

    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.