4 ms·

Of course market dynamics are a valid argument! They matter very much, because changes in the market affect peoples' quality of life. Policies that distort the

Of course market dynamics are a valid argument! They matter very much, because changes in the market affect peoples' quality of life. Policies that distort the market in a way that adversely affects peoples' quality of life should not be implemented without very good reasons. Even policies that are not expected to introduce such distortions often do, so it's good to be cautious about any proposals which could have unintended economic consequences. Copyright and patent protection are not one-sided. Consumers benefit from them, because copyrights and patents incentivize the creation of things which would not have been created otherwise. Many lifesaving medicines never would have been invented if pharmaceutical companies would not have been able to protect them via patents and get rich. Similarly, much of the music, movies, books, etc. that consumers enjoy never would have been created if their authors and publishers were not able to protect them via copyright, and thereby get rich. A lot of medical, technological, and cultural progress has been made by people trying to get rich. Patents and copyrights are ingenious because they channel peoples' desire to get rich into outcomes that are overall beneficial to society. The benefits compensate for the market restrictions they accompany, and overall, patents and copyrights have made society better off than it would have been otherwise. Finally, what responsibilities do you think companies shirking? A responsibility to make products repairable by the consumers? No such responsibility exists. Nor do you have the right to demand that a company design its products to include a feature you like, such as repairability. If you think such responsibilities or rights exist, prove it. If you think they don't exist, but should be created, prove that the benefit they will bring to society will compensate for the market distortions they will produce (which will be quite significant if you think through all of the extra development, support, and liability costs that manufacturers will have to endure).

mindslight 10y ago
You're simultaneously wed to copyright because it's here, and arguing against a "right" to repair because it is not. So you're just repeating rationalizations for the current status quo. For the third time now - copyright and patents presume to create a type of creative product wherein it is not the manufacture of the product that is really being sold to the consumer, but the design of it. A person buys a cell phone not for the plastic and doped silicon it is made of, but ostensibly for the abstract structure of the way that they are arranged. Since the person is buying an instance of a design, it stands to reason that they should have the ability to service the physical manifestation and otherwise directly interact with that design. It's not surprising that companies want to have their cake and eat it too - implementing only the half of an abstraction that takes away a consumer's rights while ignoring the second half and leaving them subject to law-of-the-jungle. They successfully wrote law like this for scratched cds, binary software, and DRM. But that hardly implies that their land grab is in the public's interest, appeals to "trickle-down" benefits notwithstanding.
- twblalock 10y ago
  > You're simultaneously wed to copyright because it's here, and arguing against a "right" to repair because it is not. So you're just repeating rationalizations for the current status quo. Oh, so you're a mind reader who can figure out my motivations? By the way, those are arguments, not rationalizations. They are pretty good, too. > For the third time now - copyright and patents presume to create a type of creative product wherein it is not the manufacture of the product that is really being sold to the consumer, but the design of it. A person buys a cell phone not for the plastic and doped silicon it is made of, but ostensibly for the abstract structure of the way that they are arranged. So what? Nothing in this logically necessitates any conclusions about repairability of products. > Since the person is buying an instance of a design, it stands to reason that they should have the ability to service the physical manifestation and otherwise directly interact with that design. How exactly does your previous statement logically necessitate this? Show your work. Otherwise, it is a handwavy "stands to reason," "it's just obvious" kind of assertion. > It's not surprising that companies want to have their cake and eat it too - implementing only the half of an abstraction that takes away a consumer's rights while ignoring the second half and leaving them subject to law-of-the-jungle. What rights are being taken away? In your first sentence, you argued that a right to repair is not "here." How then can it then be violated or taken away by companies? How can anyone violate a non-existent right?
  - mindslight 10y ago
    It doesn't take an ability to read minds to characterize a comment. In a universe with no copyright, arguments about its benefits would fall flat. In a universe with a right to repair, all the consumer benefits would be "manifestly true" in the way you're treating the arguments for copyright. You're demanding a level of proof that can only be met by having the condition already existing, and thus just defending the status quo. > show your work So you've expressed your arguments in terms of ZFC or whatever? Coming up with new concepts is obviously intuitive work - I've laid out what I see as a simple deeper abstraction behind copyright, which you've done nothing but ignore along with every other argument. > What rights are being taken away? Rather than get into semantics over the word "right", let's say lawful ability. In the case of a CD, what has been taken away is your ability to simply make copies of that CD. Instead, the publisher purports to sell you a license to only listen to the music. Yet they conveniently forget the second half of that abstraction - if the CD is scratched, they don't send you a new one!

mindslight 10y ago

You're simultaneously wed to copyright because it's here, and arguing against a "right" to repair because it is not. So you're just repeating rationalizations for the current status quo. For the third time now - copyright and patents presume to create a type of creative product wherein it is not the manufacture of the product that is really being sold to the consumer, but the design of it. A person buys a cell phone not for the plastic and doped silicon it is made of, but ostensibly for the abstract structure of the way that they are arranged. Since the person is buying an instance of a design, it stands to reason that they should have the ability to service the physical manifestation and otherwise directly interact with that design. It's not surprising that companies want to have their cake and eat it too - implementing only the half of an abstraction that takes away a consumer's rights while ignoring the second half and leaving them subject to law-of-the-jungle. They successfully wrote law like this for scratched cds, binary software, and DRM. But that hardly implies that their land grab is in the public's interest, appeals to "trickle-down" benefits notwithstanding.

twblalock 10y ago
> You're simultaneously wed to copyright because it's here, and arguing against a "right" to repair because it is not. So you're just repeating rationalizations for the current status quo. Oh, so you're a mind reader who can figure out my motivations? By the way, those are arguments, not rationalizations. They are pretty good, too. > For the third time now - copyright and patents presume to create a type of creative product wherein it is not the manufacture of the product that is really being sold to the consumer, but the design of it. A person buys a cell phone not for the plastic and doped silicon it is made of, but ostensibly for the abstract structure of the way that they are arranged. So what? Nothing in this logically necessitates any conclusions about repairability of products. > Since the person is buying an instance of a design, it stands to reason that they should have the ability to service the physical manifestation and otherwise directly interact with that design. How exactly does your previous statement logically necessitate this? Show your work. Otherwise, it is a handwavy "stands to reason," "it's just obvious" kind of assertion. > It's not surprising that companies want to have their cake and eat it too - implementing only the half of an abstraction that takes away a consumer's rights while ignoring the second half and leaving them subject to law-of-the-jungle. What rights are being taken away? In your first sentence, you argued that a right to repair is not "here." How then can it then be violated or taken away by companies? How can anyone violate a non-existent right?
- mindslight 10y ago
  It doesn't take an ability to read minds to characterize a comment. In a universe with no copyright, arguments about its benefits would fall flat. In a universe with a right to repair, all the consumer benefits would be "manifestly true" in the way you're treating the arguments for copyright. You're demanding a level of proof that can only be met by having the condition already existing, and thus just defending the status quo. > show your work So you've expressed your arguments in terms of ZFC or whatever? Coming up with new concepts is obviously intuitive work - I've laid out what I see as a simple deeper abstraction behind copyright, which you've done nothing but ignore along with every other argument. > What rights are being taken away? Rather than get into semantics over the word "right", let's say lawful ability. In the case of a CD, what has been taken away is your ability to simply make copies of that CD. Instead, the publisher purports to sell you a license to only listen to the music. Yet they conveniently forget the second half of that abstraction - if the CD is scratched, they don't send you a new one!