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Ask HN: What should the amendment abolishing copyrights and patents be called?
Options: Free Ideas Amendment, Intellectual Freedom Amendment, Free Mind Amendment, Liberate Ideas Amendment...
...something else?
Context: https://breckyunits.com/the-intellectual-freedom-amendment.html
- themodelplumber 4y agoDistribute that A-hole's Damn Book Yourself for Fun & Invent the World Again Amendment
- gregjor 4y agoHow about the Don Quixote Amendment? In December 2020 President Trump signed into law provisions of the Trademark Modernization Act, included in the Consolidated Appropriations Act. The new provisions, now law, strengthen the position of trademark and copyright holders. American law tends to more protection of intellectual property, not less. One can reasonably argue that protection of private property -- including intellectual property -- sits at the core of the US Constitution. Any proposed change to American law that threaten property rights would get labeled "communist" and quickly dismissed as deeply anti-American and the thin end of the feared socialist wedge. Nice to see a new generation discovering what Tolstoy and Abbie Hoffman proposed: Steal This Book.
- breck 4y agoI'm pretty confident you could argue and win that the 13th Amendment should have also ended copyright and patent law. https://breckyunits.com/an-unpopular-phrase.html https://breckyunits.com/an-unpopular-phrase.html
- gregjor 4y agoSorry but the arguments come across as juvenile. If someone can redefine “property,” “slavery,” and “rights” to mean anything to fit their argument then they can prove almost anything. Courts don’t work like that though.
- breck 4y agoWow you're quite the expert. How many Constitutional Amendments have you passed?
- gregjor 4y agoAs many as the author of the article: none. The most recent amendment to the US Constitution passed in 1992, when the author was four. I do have the advantage of US citizenship and living in America rather than in Russia. You didn't deliver the withering comeback you think you did. Very few people have passed amendments to the Constitution or had anything to do with that process. But the history of intellectual property law in the US can fairly well inform someone familiar with US law and history that equating it to slavery -- which the US had a literal civil war over -- and trying to get support for amending the Constitution to ban IP will get exactly nowhere.
- breck 4y agoYou keep saying "intellectual property" but that term makes no sense, like saying "dry water". Property rights and the arrangement of those atoms are fundamentally incompatible. You cannot be for property rights and also for copyrights and patents—that would be like saying you are dry while you swim in the ocean—it's a stupid statement, to be blunt, and suggests you should maybe try to rewire some broken connections in your mind. Just because plenty of sheep are willing to go along and repeat stupid things does not mean I will give you a pass. https://breckyunits.com/an-unpopular-phrase.html https://breckyunits.com/an-unpopular-phrase.html
- gregjor 4y agoAccording to the wacko article you keep linking to maybe the term makes no sense, but I use that term because the article you seem to love so much uses it (with an incorrect understanding of the term, but still). Arguing by analogy, as you and the author of the linked article do multiple times, makes for a very weak foundation to base legal challenges on. So good luck with that, I look forward to reading about your victories in court based on proving that intellectual property equals slavery, and that no one can own IP, and so on. Get your analogies about dry water and intellectual slavery sharpened so you can teach those judges a thing or two.
- giantg2 4y agoThis seems like a troll post. The blog already gives its proposed amendment a name. The name is the least concern as the proposal is too extreme to have viable support, and this post skips over the important/interesting parts of having any meaningful discussion.
- smoldesu 4y agoA fairytale?