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I think you’re misrepresenting what the intention of IP laws are. Their intention is to incentivise IP to be made publicly available. I don’t think it’s especia

I think you’re misrepresenting what the intention of IP laws are. Their intention is to incentivise IP to be made publicly available. I don’t think it’s especially relevant whether the person who did the work creating the IP retains ownership of it, or whether the party that funded the work they did creating it has ownership. There’s nothing wrong with the idea that somebody can be employed to create IP for their employer. I agree with you that the law is dysfunctional in many ways. I especially agree with you that a law should be judged on the outcomes it creates rather than the intent of the policy that motivates it. But I’d suggest the appropriate solution is to improve the law, rather than abolishing IP rights. Without IP rights, we’d just return to industrial trade secrets, which would only really benefit big business. You would see much less investment in areas where trade secrets are not possible (like most pharmaceutical research for instance). A lot of people already think current-day DRM controls are anti-consumer, but how does a cinema-only movie release sound?

advael 5y ago
I don't think it can function, and I think trade secrets are frankly quite weak. In practice, trade secrets don't usually stand up to sophisticated reverse-engineering efforts, and patents frequently and consistently fail to disclose implementation details that are important to how something works. As for art and media, the DMCA had a real problem to solve: The business models of the massive distribution conglomerates that had arisen when publishing and copying information was expensive were infeasible in the face of digital computers that could copy any information with high fidelity and distribute it over the internet. This business model should have collapsed in the face of this technology. The market would have been forced to adjust to some new model, e.g. crowdfunding (as has, again, already happened in even relatively large endeavors considered "independent" because they are not backed by a massive conglomerate). Instead, the market's status quo was prioritized. What needed to happen was for the market to equillibrate to the new reality of these technologies, and it's insane to view the "piracy" fights of the 90s as anything other than that process. DRM controls were, as a technology, a zero-sum game played by distributors against consumers, and some of them should - by any reasonable interpretation of laws against malicious access to a device owned by someone else - be illegal. Criminalization of circumventing DRM is a horrible monster of a law that puts a heavy criminal thumb on the scale in this conflict, prevented the market from equilibrating in favor of consumers or even new players trying new business models in any way, and cemented the dominance of existing players by fiat, giving them the backing of a police state to effectively enforce their business models as law
- AmericanChopper 5y ago
  > This business model should have collapsed in the face of this technology. The market would have been forced to adjust to some new model This very obviously did occur, though perhaps not as quickly as it might have otherwise. The market of CD and DVD sales has absolutely collapsed, and streaming services have taken over, regardless of that fact that this was initially resisted by the industry. But this new paradigm, which offers a much better product to consumers, is only possible because of IP rights. Piracy is no longer the existential threat to this industry that it once was, because legally licensed content has been able to offer a superior user experience (in most cases). But if I was allowed to set up a Netflix clone, host anything I wanted on it, and undercut their prices, then capital allocation to content creation would evaporate immediately. The thing you’re trying to promote access to simply doesn’t exist without these protections, and those protections don’t prevent anybody from crowdsourcing something if they want to. > In practice, trade secrets don't usually stand up to sophisticated reverse-engineering efforts, and patents frequently and consistently fail to disclose implementation details that are important to how something works. The ubiquity of out-of-patent technology in the market place seems to undermine the idea that the public doesn’t benefit from capital allocated to IP R&D. You don’t have to think about it for very long to realize that without these protections, allocating capital to innovate production and synthesis processes that can be maintained a secret becomes the most appealing investment for capital that would otherwise be going to patentable R&D. A stance against IP protections in general is extremely fringe and extremely short sighted. If a system has problems, advocating for abolishing the entire thing isn’t very sensible, especially when it’s a system that has already provided so much benefit to society. You might hypothesize that those benefits would have been realized even without that system. But that hypothesis doesn’t really stand up to much scrutiny, especially when we know for a fact that the value this system has created is directly quantifiable.
  - advael 5y ago
    I don't think there's strong evidence that piracy even was an existential threat in practice, but regardless the new business models that have emerged are in fact far worse value propositions for consumers that want to be able to keep a copy of the thing they watch or listen to, access said things ever again without a continued subscription, or be able to find media that doesn't require being spied on by some company to use. It's also a worse value proposition for artists, who receive much worse pay for works on streaming services exactly because their reach is so massive, and they can spread their risk out across lots of artists and markets by making it much harder to make a living off their services for said artists. Technology will always change how business is done, but right now, the law is playing a role that makes that shift more toward companies having strong controls over and surveillance of their customers that can't even legally be circumvented in the name of protection of IP. A business model like BandCamp could easily have worked without the DMCA. A business model like Netflix couldn't, but I don't really consider that a good thing
LocalH 5y ago
The original intention of IP law was as you comment. At least in terms of copyright, that has been subverted by continual extensions. We've gone from 14+14, or 28+14, to what, 90 years past the author's death?
- AmericanChopper 5y ago
  Any good idea can be implemented stupidly. Are you trying to say copyright periods should be reduced, or is that this is evidence that they shouldn’t exist?

advael 5y ago

I don't think it can function, and I think trade secrets are frankly quite weak. In practice, trade secrets don't usually stand up to sophisticated reverse-engineering efforts, and patents frequently and consistently fail to disclose implementation details that are important to how something works. As for art and media, the DMCA had a real problem to solve: The business models of the massive distribution conglomerates that had arisen when publishing and copying information was expensive were infeasible in the face of digital computers that could copy any information with high fidelity and distribute it over the internet. This business model should have collapsed in the face of this technology. The market would have been forced to adjust to some new model, e.g. crowdfunding (as has, again, already happened in even relatively large endeavors considered "independent" because they are not backed by a massive conglomerate). Instead, the market's status quo was prioritized. What needed to happen was for the market to equillibrate to the new reality of these technologies, and it's insane to view the "piracy" fights of the 90s as anything other than that process. DRM controls were, as a technology, a zero-sum game played by distributors against consumers, and some of them should - by any reasonable interpretation of laws against malicious access to a device owned by someone else - be illegal. Criminalization of circumventing DRM is a horrible monster of a law that puts a heavy criminal thumb on the scale in this conflict, prevented the market from equilibrating in favor of consumers or even new players trying new business models in any way, and cemented the dominance of existing players by fiat, giving them the backing of a police state to effectively enforce their business models as law

AmericanChopper 5y ago
> This business model should have collapsed in the face of this technology. The market would have been forced to adjust to some new model This very obviously did occur, though perhaps not as quickly as it might have otherwise. The market of CD and DVD sales has absolutely collapsed, and streaming services have taken over, regardless of that fact that this was initially resisted by the industry. But this new paradigm, which offers a much better product to consumers, is only possible because of IP rights. Piracy is no longer the existential threat to this industry that it once was, because legally licensed content has been able to offer a superior user experience (in most cases). But if I was allowed to set up a Netflix clone, host anything I wanted on it, and undercut their prices, then capital allocation to content creation would evaporate immediately. The thing you’re trying to promote access to simply doesn’t exist without these protections, and those protections don’t prevent anybody from crowdsourcing something if they want to. > In practice, trade secrets don't usually stand up to sophisticated reverse-engineering efforts, and patents frequently and consistently fail to disclose implementation details that are important to how something works. The ubiquity of out-of-patent technology in the market place seems to undermine the idea that the public doesn’t benefit from capital allocated to IP R&D. You don’t have to think about it for very long to realize that without these protections, allocating capital to innovate production and synthesis processes that can be maintained a secret becomes the most appealing investment for capital that would otherwise be going to patentable R&D. A stance against IP protections in general is extremely fringe and extremely short sighted. If a system has problems, advocating for abolishing the entire thing isn’t very sensible, especially when it’s a system that has already provided so much benefit to society. You might hypothesize that those benefits would have been realized even without that system. But that hypothesis doesn’t really stand up to much scrutiny, especially when we know for a fact that the value this system has created is directly quantifiable.
- advael 5y ago
  I don't think there's strong evidence that piracy even was an existential threat in practice, but regardless the new business models that have emerged are in fact far worse value propositions for consumers that want to be able to keep a copy of the thing they watch or listen to, access said things ever again without a continued subscription, or be able to find media that doesn't require being spied on by some company to use. It's also a worse value proposition for artists, who receive much worse pay for works on streaming services exactly because their reach is so massive, and they can spread their risk out across lots of artists and markets by making it much harder to make a living off their services for said artists. Technology will always change how business is done, but right now, the law is playing a role that makes that shift more toward companies having strong controls over and surveillance of their customers that can't even legally be circumvented in the name of protection of IP. A business model like BandCamp could easily have worked without the DMCA. A business model like Netflix couldn't, but I don't really consider that a good thing

LocalH 5y ago

The original intention of IP law was as you comment. At least in terms of copyright, that has been subverted by continual extensions. We've gone from 14+14, or 28+14, to what, 90 years past the author's death?

AmericanChopper 5y ago
Any good idea can be implemented stupidly. Are you trying to say copyright periods should be reduced, or is that this is evidence that they shouldn’t exist?