2 ms·

> It’s bad faith to pretend slavery is the same as a limited time monopoly to incentivize people to create things. But copyrights and patents are a form of sla

by breck 6y ago

> It’s bad faith to pretend slavery is the same as a limited time monopoly to incentivize people to create things. But copyrights and patents are a form of slavery. They are in no way, shape or form, a form of property rights. In fact, they are the exact opposite. You cannot have property rights and copyrights and patents. You get to have one or the other [0]. The only way you can reconcile the 2, is if you allow the possibility of having property rights over another person, which is by definition slavery. But moving beyond the semantic and rhetorical, who do you think benefits from patents and copyrights? People and corporations are still benefitting from copyrights from the years 1926-1965, when most African Americans were still fighting for their basic rights to vote. Do you think these laws are benefitting the descendants of slaves, or the descendants of slave owners? This is not a rhetorical question. You can do some research into who is getting the revenue from these laws and you will find an interesting distribution that resemble some earlier periods in history. There is no reason why people in poor cities should be barred from transmitting software peer to peer peacefully and instead forced via threat of violence to pay tithes to people like Bill Gates. > Imagine you’re creating a new country and you want people > to make things, how can you incentivize this? This argument is so asinine but very typical of the arguments proffered by those pushing #ImaginaryPropertyLaws. There is ZERO incentive NOT to innovate and make things. ZERO. "What's that daughter, you are hungry? Sorry I have no incentive to invent a better plough and feed you because if I were to do without patent laws then I can't stop other people from also benefitting from my idea."...."Oh Grandma, you're sick? I would try to find a cure but I have no incentive since if I were to find a cure I couldn't charge a royalty to other people who read about it." None of our most important things were built by people who gave a shit about copyright and patents and none of them ever will be. > There’s nuance and complexity here There is not. The sun does not revolve around the earth. There is no compromise ("I think we should compromise and say it revolves 70 percent around the earth"). You either decide to go with math and numbers and logic and first principles or you decide to go with whatever those in power decree. There is truth and lies. And some times the true things aren't the most well known things, and the lies get more airtime. #AbolishImaginaryProperty > Are software patents...stupid? Yes. Okay at least we agree on that. [0] https://breckyunits.com/an-unpopular-phrase.html https://breckyunits.com/an-unpopular-phrase.html P.S. Not trying to harp on your personally, it's the industry as a whole that my anger is directed towards.

fossuser 6y ago
If it costs you one billion dollars to discover a drug and then that drug can be sold by others making generics immediately for five cents then the drug will not get created, the business model isn't viable. This kind of thing is what I mean by incentives. Even with modern IP laws you see this play out, if a drug is less marketable even with the IP protections it doesn't get made. If you write a book and that book can be immediately distributed or sold by others giving you nothing then the only people that will write books are people that have money and are willing to do it for free or donations (this is already a little true, but would be more extreme in a world without copyright). We want a society that empowers more people to create. Policy is not equivalent to physical laws like gravity. It turns out you can have property rights alongside patents and copyrights, we do. Just stating that you're correct like gravity isn't convincing. I could state my position is equivalent to gravity too. As far as the length of copyright, I agree and the link in my first comment goes into that. This is clearly an issue you're passionate about and have held for a long time, I can relate somewhat because I was more partial to some of those ideas when I was younger. I changed my mind when I read more about it. The reason the slavery bit bothers me is because it confuses the topic with an unrelated and especially terrible historical issue that's particularly provocative. I find that rhetorical style a sign of bad faith. This kind of thing plus the hashtags I generally dislike and find unpersuasive.
- breck 6y ago
  > If it costs you one billion dollars to discover a drug This never happens. Generally what does happen is it costs one trillion dollars to do the basic public domain research funded by the people to discover a drug, then some corporation makes a crappy version of one derivative, patents that version, shills it and falsely markets it for the duration of the patent term, and then tries to run away when the damage from the patent emerges (https://longbets.org/855/ https://longbets.org/855/). Source: spent a few years in medical research.
rutthenut 6y ago
>> There is no reason why people in poor cities should be barred from transmitting software peer to peer peacefully and instead forced via threat of violence to pay tithes to people like Bill Gates. You appear to be under some delusion that when companies invest in developing and supporting software - or other things - they are behoven to give that away as a charitable act. Microsoft, for example, is a business tasked with making a profit.

by breck 6y ago

fossuser 6y ago

If it costs you one billion dollars to discover a drug and then that drug can be sold by others making generics immediately for five cents then the drug will not get created, the business model isn't viable. This kind of thing is what I mean by incentives. Even with modern IP laws you see this play out, if a drug is less marketable even with the IP protections it doesn't get made. If you write a book and that book can be immediately distributed or sold by others giving you nothing then the only people that will write books are people that have money and are willing to do it for free or donations (this is already a little true, but would be more extreme in a world without copyright). We want a society that empowers more people to create. Policy is not equivalent to physical laws like gravity. It turns out you can have property rights alongside patents and copyrights, we do. Just stating that you're correct like gravity isn't convincing. I could state my position is equivalent to gravity too. As far as the length of copyright, I agree and the link in my first comment goes into that. This is clearly an issue you're passionate about and have held for a long time, I can relate somewhat because I was more partial to some of those ideas when I was younger. I changed my mind when I read more about it. The reason the slavery bit bothers me is because it confuses the topic with an unrelated and especially terrible historical issue that's particularly provocative. I find that rhetorical style a sign of bad faith. This kind of thing plus the hashtags I generally dislike and find unpersuasive.

breck 6y ago
> If it costs you one billion dollars to discover a drug This never happens. Generally what does happen is it costs one trillion dollars to do the basic public domain research funded by the people to discover a drug, then some corporation makes a crappy version of one derivative, patents that version, shills it and falsely markets it for the duration of the patent term, and then tries to run away when the damage from the patent emerges (https://longbets.org/855/ https://longbets.org/855/). Source: spent a few years in medical research.

rutthenut 6y ago

>> There is no reason why people in poor cities should be barred from transmitting software peer to peer peacefully and instead forced via threat of violence to pay tithes to people like Bill Gates. You appear to be under some delusion that when companies invest in developing and supporting software - or other things - they are behoven to give that away as a charitable act. Microsoft, for example, is a business tasked with making a profit.