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The question, then, is why we bothered effectively handing Page and Brin free startup funds without claiming any IP or equity stake in the resulting products, t

The question, then, is why we bothered effectively handing Page and Brin free startup funds without claiming any IP or equity stake in the resulting products, then act surprised when they don't want to pay taxes on the money they made.

Nasrudith 6y ago
Because that would defeat the point of the basic research - for it to be used and it isn't exclusive to the two even though they were the most signicant users. Governments have already have already found outsourcing their manufacturing to contractors had superior results to doing so in house. I think nuclear weapons are about the only thing which isn't privatized. The government already has an effective equity share anyway over everybody - it is called taxes. Money being mobile has other economic benefits but comes at the cost of allowing more fringe case shenanigans.
colejohnson66 6y ago
Isn’t the US government not allowed to own any IP? I’m pretty sure the Constitution says so. That’s why JPL is a thing; so NASA can pay JPL to do research (giving JPL, a company, the IP).
- raspberry_pi 6y ago
  Seems like straight up theft to me. Why is that not owned by the public?
  - colejohnson66 6y ago
    Because the Constitution says so. It’s as simple as that. If we want that changed, we’d need a Constitutional amendment.
  - samatman 6y ago
    It is partially owned by the public. All labor is partially owned by the public. Private IP makes corporations and people a lot of money. That money is taxed. That's how the government gets its share. The public-private partnership allows for researchers to claim most of the value of their labor, while the government can encourage areas of research which are in the national interest through grant funding. How much tax money do you think has derived from the early research on integrated circuits? A lot, right? Proposing that the government can simply confiscate intellectual property if they fund it, would just result in a world where government funding is unattractive. This would give more power to corporations and billionaires to direct the course of research into their own private interests. That doesn't strike me as a win.
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      confiscate intellectual property if they fund it "Confiscate" is a very loaded word to use here. You don't say that I "confiscated the farmer's tomatoes" when I trade money for those tomatoes, or that an employer "confiscated the employee's code" when they traded that code for salary. How much tax money would be derived from the multitude of businesses that would arise if more government-funded IP was freely licensed instead of granted to a single spinoff company?
      - samatman 6y ago
        Not much, since taking government money would mean forking over everything you invent to the government, and not many research groups would want to do it. It would be a poison pill: everything your lab does would come under scrutiny and potential lawsuit, how do you demonstrate that one thing was paid for with public funds but another thing wasn't? In a response to describing researchers keeping IP they develop under grant as "straight up theft", I felt entitled to use a bit of inflammatory rhetoric of my own.
- wil421 6y ago
  The US DoD can block any patent or make any patent top secret. Why would they need to do something like outsource to JPL to get patent? Pretty sure I’ve seen patents by scientists on behalf of the airport?
- webmaven 6y ago
  > Isn’t the US government not allowed to own any IP? I’m pretty sure the Constitution says so. Not exactly. Anything created by the government and it's employees is automatically public domain (so, no copyright), but the government can and does get copyrights assigned to it[0] all the time for things created by vendors and contractors (this is negotiated in advance). So, the government can own copyrights, if it acquires them. [0] sometimes the US government just gets a perpetual, worldwide, yadda, yadda license instead. Typically not sublicensable, though. This can be a really sweet deal for the vendor, and really annoying for the public, particularly when it comes to data sets created with public funds.
wil421 6y ago
Because the investment was well worth it for the federal government. How much tax revenue has Google created? How many intelligent people have immigrated to the US because of google?

Nasrudith 6y ago

Because that would defeat the point of the basic research - for it to be used and it isn't exclusive to the two even though they were the most signicant users. Governments have already have already found outsourcing their manufacturing to contractors had superior results to doing so in house. I think nuclear weapons are about the only thing which isn't privatized. The government already has an effective equity share anyway over everybody - it is called taxes. Money being mobile has other economic benefits but comes at the cost of allowing more fringe case shenanigans.

colejohnson66 6y ago

Isn’t the US government not allowed to own any IP? I’m pretty sure the Constitution says so. That’s why JPL is a thing; so NASA can pay JPL to do research (giving JPL, a company, the IP).

raspberry_pi 6y ago
Seems like straight up theft to me. Why is that not owned by the public?
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  Because the Constitution says so. It’s as simple as that. If we want that changed, we’d need a Constitutional amendment.
- samatman 6y ago
  It is partially owned by the public. All labor is partially owned by the public. Private IP makes corporations and people a lot of money. That money is taxed. That's how the government gets its share. The public-private partnership allows for researchers to claim most of the value of their labor, while the government can encourage areas of research which are in the national interest through grant funding. How much tax money do you think has derived from the early research on integrated circuits? A lot, right? Proposing that the government can simply confiscate intellectual property if they fund it, would just result in a world where government funding is unattractive. This would give more power to corporations and billionaires to direct the course of research into their own private interests. That doesn't strike me as a win.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    confiscate intellectual property if they fund it "Confiscate" is a very loaded word to use here. You don't say that I "confiscated the farmer's tomatoes" when I trade money for those tomatoes, or that an employer "confiscated the employee's code" when they traded that code for salary. How much tax money would be derived from the multitude of businesses that would arise if more government-funded IP was freely licensed instead of granted to a single spinoff company?
    - samatman 6y ago
      Not much, since taking government money would mean forking over everything you invent to the government, and not many research groups would want to do it. It would be a poison pill: everything your lab does would come under scrutiny and potential lawsuit, how do you demonstrate that one thing was paid for with public funds but another thing wasn't? In a response to describing researchers keeping IP they develop under grant as "straight up theft", I felt entitled to use a bit of inflammatory rhetoric of my own.
wil421 6y ago
The US DoD can block any patent or make any patent top secret. Why would they need to do something like outsource to JPL to get patent? Pretty sure I’ve seen patents by scientists on behalf of the airport?
webmaven 6y ago
> Isn’t the US government not allowed to own any IP? I’m pretty sure the Constitution says so. Not exactly. Anything created by the government and it's employees is automatically public domain (so, no copyright), but the government can and does get copyrights assigned to it[0] all the time for things created by vendors and contractors (this is negotiated in advance). So, the government can own copyrights, if it acquires them. [0] sometimes the US government just gets a perpetual, worldwide, yadda, yadda license instead. Typically not sublicensable, though. This can be a really sweet deal for the vendor, and really annoying for the public, particularly when it comes to data sets created with public funds.

wil421 6y ago

Because the investment was well worth it for the federal government. How much tax revenue has Google created? How many intelligent people have immigrated to the US because of google?