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There are many things that bear little sense in the absolute, but are a pillar of the world we live in. IP rights are one of them. The part that strikes me the

There are many things that bear little sense in the absolute, but are a pillar of the world we live in. IP rights are one of them. The part that strikes me the most is the following: "proponents of IP say that without it we wouldn't have movies and medicine, but we had both for centuries without IP". That's just false. True, we had art in the Past, but it was a different time: in the Middle Age everything was the King's property, and before him, God's. The critical point is that the business model was different: we relied on rich families to cover the costs. Dante's Commedia was covered by the pockets of the Lords of Ravenna (and the Church). Virgil? Covered by the pockets of Maecenas (and Augustus). Wanna have democracy and equality? Capitalism is the only business model proven capable of sustaining that. Same goes for medicine, that by the way never reached any meaningful scale before science, IP and capitalism came along. The author seems less interested in getting the facts right and more interested in pushing forward their political point of view.

neilwilson 6y ago
"Same goes for medicine, that by the way never reached any meaningful scale before science, IP and capitalism came along." How did the Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccine come about, and at the low price that it did? By Fiscal Activism by the UK government. That's how basic science, research and development comes about - by government fiscal activism making the results freely available. Once that breaches a risk threshold the private sector will jump on it and accelerate the innovation from it. The existence of the Internet shows the power of that approach.
- mousepilot 5y ago
  I think we can still have intellectual property rights even in this context. Some things are worth working on at a national level, like the vaccine, but that doesn't have to be an argument in abolishing all IP rights. We don't have to nationalize pop music for instance, heck it doesn't even make sense to do this.

neilwilson 6y ago

"Same goes for medicine, that by the way never reached any meaningful scale before science, IP and capitalism came along." How did the Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccine come about, and at the low price that it did? By Fiscal Activism by the UK government. That's how basic science, research and development comes about - by government fiscal activism making the results freely available. Once that breaches a risk threshold the private sector will jump on it and accelerate the innovation from it. The existence of the Internet shows the power of that approach.

mousepilot 5y ago
I think we can still have intellectual property rights even in this context. Some things are worth working on at a national level, like the vaccine, but that doesn't have to be an argument in abolishing all IP rights. We don't have to nationalize pop music for instance, heck it doesn't even make sense to do this.