4 ms·

I was taken by the idea that when anyone can broadly copy anyone else, the details become more important. Without copy-protection companies would take the time

by sambeau 16y ago

I was taken by the idea that when anyone can broadly copy anyone else, the details become more important. Without copy-protection companies would take the time to get the details right rather than protect their IP and sit on their laurels. We would get fewer big leaps but a lot more iteration. Drug companies would be constantly trying to release products that are 1 or 2% better than the last one. I suspect that this would work in society's favour.

kiba 16y ago
It is my opinion that people won't start copying until you become profitable, or at least popular. People can't just copy whatever people come up with, because lot of these ideas will fail. So they will try to copy successful models/products. The only problem is, if they wait too long, they will lose most of the potential profits. That's called the first mover advantage and I believe it to be sufficient incentives.(Because ya simply got there first, before anybody else, therefore you get looot of money!) Sometime people also just never got around to copying you. This is especially true in my experience. My website once got a huge traffic spike from digg one time. Despite the overwhelming traffic, nobody ever forked my site despite its liberal copyright policies. Heck, the first mover advantages apply to the American publishing industry centuries ago, when there is no recognition of foreign copyright. In some cases, the British authors actually earn more from their sale of manuscript to American publisher(so they can be first), than they do from royalties in their own country.
- AlisdairO 16y ago
  > (Because ya simply got there first, before anybody else, therefore you get looot of money!) It's a sufficient advantage in slow moving industries, or ones where the cost of innovation is very low. In a world where an exact duplicate of a product can be made in very little time, it's very little advantage at all. Your website is a prime example of something where the cost of innovation is extremely low (and further, the popularity is short term). If you consider the cost of designing and producing a new car, say, compared with the cost of copying the design and reproducing it, the economics look a little different.
  - kiba 16y ago
    As far as I know, the first mover advantage pretty much applies everywhere, even in a world where everything can be duplicated in very little time. Heck, Redhat is a prime example of the first mover advantage. As far as I know, industries as wide as steam engines, movies, sheet musics, software, fashions, agriculture, books, newspaper etc have no problem thriving without intellectual monopolies.(ERrr..actually Hollywood moved to California to escape the Edison patent regime. Patents delayed the evolution of steam engines quite a bit and divert inventor resource from R&D and production to lawyering.) Either your theory is wrong, or there's more to it than just first mover advantage.
    - AlisdairO 16y ago
      First a note: I'm certainly of the opinion that the system as it stands is excessively in favour of intellectual monopolies - particularly when it comes to software patents. I just don't hold the opinion that taking the other extreme is productive. There's the obvious prime example: drugs manufacture. The cost to research drugs and then test them is astronomical, while the cost of producing them is often very low. Much of the cost of the drug then, pays for the original research. It takes quite some time for the drugs to pay back the research cost. What, then, is the solution to making money in this sector without intellectual monopolies? Personally, I'm in favour of no intellectual monopolies in areas where the cost of creation is high. Where the cost is lower (new, fast moving industries, for example), IP terms would be reduced or eliminated.
      - kiba 16y ago
        The cost of creation is alway high relative to manufacture. It may not be measured in dollars, but it can be measured in time. The cost of writing books, the cost of fact-checking, and the cost of marketing, all add up. Think about the plant growers who must breed generations and generations of plant? Take my website for example, the opportunity cost in creating the content is enormous. Duplicating only takes a few hundred dollars and maybe 3 hours. RedHat almost certainly spend millions of dollars investing developer man hours in their distro and the linux kernel. The pharmaceutical industry costs' is surely higher than usual. However, the original drugs can sell for very high price, even when generic versions introduce market pressure. The high cost of creation is not unique, and not limited to pharmaceutical industry. It is only relatively speaking that pharmaceutical industry's creation cost is much higher.(Don't forget that some of the cost are certainly inflated by an overly risk averse regulatory agency.) In any case, introducing intellectual monopolies is a dicey game. Not only you must balance the incentives, you must also manage the bureaucracy, take into account wasted cost opportunity that could have went into research and marketing. If somebody exploit a loophole, it would take forever to change the law because congress is slow, or because of huge opposition pressure. People can be brought to favor certain corporations. So you want to support a system of intellectual monopoly? Good luck balancing all the incentives, disincentives, and things that come up that you didn't know about. To underestimate the difficulty of managing a regulatory system is to fall prey to the planning fallacy.
rick888 16y ago
"I suspect that this would work in society's favour." maybe, but it would most likely take the profitability out of most good ideas for small companies. As soon as a good idea is seen as profitable, a bigger company with more resources (connections, time, money, employees) could come along and run with it. Once companies got to a certain level, they could just sit there on their laurels and poach ideas from others. Over time, this would result in less and less innovation and we would probably have a few big companies in each industry.
- Daishiman 16y ago
  Umm, we're already there. Chinese knockoffs? There are entire industries that attempt to replicate original. The originals still stand and are more profitable than the knockoffs. People in first-world countries fail to realize that for most third-world economies with very little IP enforcement, the era of cheap replication and no IP has been around for decades, yet none of the nightmarish worst-case scenarios have appeared.

by sambeau 16y ago

kiba 16y ago

It is my opinion that people won't start copying until you become profitable, or at least popular. People can't just copy whatever people come up with, because lot of these ideas will fail. So they will try to copy successful models/products. The only problem is, if they wait too long, they will lose most of the potential profits. That's called the first mover advantage and I believe it to be sufficient incentives.(Because ya simply got there first, before anybody else, therefore you get looot of money!) Sometime people also just never got around to copying you. This is especially true in my experience. My website once got a huge traffic spike from digg one time. Despite the overwhelming traffic, nobody ever forked my site despite its liberal copyright policies. Heck, the first mover advantages apply to the American publishing industry centuries ago, when there is no recognition of foreign copyright. In some cases, the British authors actually earn more from their sale of manuscript to American publisher(so they can be first), than they do from royalties in their own country.

AlisdairO 16y ago
> (Because ya simply got there first, before anybody else, therefore you get looot of money!) It's a sufficient advantage in slow moving industries, or ones where the cost of innovation is very low. In a world where an exact duplicate of a product can be made in very little time, it's very little advantage at all. Your website is a prime example of something where the cost of innovation is extremely low (and further, the popularity is short term). If you consider the cost of designing and producing a new car, say, compared with the cost of copying the design and reproducing it, the economics look a little different.
- kiba 16y ago
  As far as I know, the first mover advantage pretty much applies everywhere, even in a world where everything can be duplicated in very little time. Heck, Redhat is a prime example of the first mover advantage. As far as I know, industries as wide as steam engines, movies, sheet musics, software, fashions, agriculture, books, newspaper etc have no problem thriving without intellectual monopolies.(ERrr..actually Hollywood moved to California to escape the Edison patent regime. Patents delayed the evolution of steam engines quite a bit and divert inventor resource from R&D and production to lawyering.) Either your theory is wrong, or there's more to it than just first mover advantage.
  - AlisdairO 16y ago
    First a note: I'm certainly of the opinion that the system as it stands is excessively in favour of intellectual monopolies - particularly when it comes to software patents. I just don't hold the opinion that taking the other extreme is productive. There's the obvious prime example: drugs manufacture. The cost to research drugs and then test them is astronomical, while the cost of producing them is often very low. Much of the cost of the drug then, pays for the original research. It takes quite some time for the drugs to pay back the research cost. What, then, is the solution to making money in this sector without intellectual monopolies? Personally, I'm in favour of no intellectual monopolies in areas where the cost of creation is high. Where the cost is lower (new, fast moving industries, for example), IP terms would be reduced or eliminated.
    - kiba 16y ago
      The cost of creation is alway high relative to manufacture. It may not be measured in dollars, but it can be measured in time. The cost of writing books, the cost of fact-checking, and the cost of marketing, all add up. Think about the plant growers who must breed generations and generations of plant? Take my website for example, the opportunity cost in creating the content is enormous. Duplicating only takes a few hundred dollars and maybe 3 hours. RedHat almost certainly spend millions of dollars investing developer man hours in their distro and the linux kernel. The pharmaceutical industry costs' is surely higher than usual. However, the original drugs can sell for very high price, even when generic versions introduce market pressure. The high cost of creation is not unique, and not limited to pharmaceutical industry. It is only relatively speaking that pharmaceutical industry's creation cost is much higher.(Don't forget that some of the cost are certainly inflated by an overly risk averse regulatory agency.) In any case, introducing intellectual monopolies is a dicey game. Not only you must balance the incentives, you must also manage the bureaucracy, take into account wasted cost opportunity that could have went into research and marketing. If somebody exploit a loophole, it would take forever to change the law because congress is slow, or because of huge opposition pressure. People can be brought to favor certain corporations. So you want to support a system of intellectual monopoly? Good luck balancing all the incentives, disincentives, and things that come up that you didn't know about. To underestimate the difficulty of managing a regulatory system is to fall prey to the planning fallacy.

rick888 16y ago

"I suspect that this would work in society's favour." maybe, but it would most likely take the profitability out of most good ideas for small companies. As soon as a good idea is seen as profitable, a bigger company with more resources (connections, time, money, employees) could come along and run with it. Once companies got to a certain level, they could just sit there on their laurels and poach ideas from others. Over time, this would result in less and less innovation and we would probably have a few big companies in each industry.

Daishiman 16y ago
Umm, we're already there. Chinese knockoffs? There are entire industries that attempt to replicate original. The originals still stand and are more profitable than the knockoffs. People in first-world countries fail to realize that for most third-world economies with very little IP enforcement, the era of cheap replication and no IP has been around for decades, yet none of the nightmarish worst-case scenarios have appeared.