15 ms·

Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct that will one day be seen as ridiculous as absolute monarchy is today. If we are going to allow it and

Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct that will one day be seen as ridiculous as absolute monarchy is today. If we are going to allow it and penalize people who are doing natural human things like sharing with friends, there has to be a specific benefit to society in every instance. For example, pay taxes on copyrights and patents, increasing every year to reflect disturbance caused to society.

PKop 4y ago
Democracy will one day be seen as ridiculous as absolute monarchy is today.
- cat_plus_plus 4y ago
  Quite possibly, society doesn't sit still, but it's still an improvement from before in modern constitutional republic context. Beats going to war to change rulers.
  - PKop 4y ago
    >an improvement I'm sure some think it is. I think dictating power based on war ability makes way more sense than everyone having a say simply by virtue of breathing. Egalitarianism is not consistent with nature. But these things go in cycles, the flaws and contradictions will accumulate and the system will collapse eventually, like they all do.
    - michaelmrose 4y ago
      How do you run a society that way? Can I get a bigger house by mulching you in your own garden and telling your family to push on? Do we decide whether you can build an extension on your house by how good a shot the counties men are? Do Walmart and Cosco fight wars over the more desirable lots? This is not a serious suggestion.
      - PKop 4y ago
        Perhaps there is a synthesis of the two, where some get more say based on "war ability" (or other such competence) without actually having to engage in micro battles everywhere. Notice I was describing the criteria upon which decision-making and power is apportioned, not necessarily how it happens. There is a long standing tradition of opposition to mass democracy, particularly amongst the founders of my country so I'm in good company there. Ultimately whatever nominal system is in place, a governing elite arises one way or another...so debates about democracy are funny because in many ways power of the masses isn't real [0]. But to the degree democracy becomes "mass" is the degree to which is becomes worse. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35223884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35223884
    - gsk22 4y ago
      > I think dictating power based on war ability makes way more sense than everyone having a say simply by virtue of breathing. I honestly can't tell if you're trolling. In what world is it better to instead give all the say to one person? Especially a person selected solely by their prowess for violence (or in leading others to violence)?
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - thayne 4y ago
        > In what world is it better to instead give all the say to one person? If that one person is wise, virtuous, and really prioritizes the people's best interest, and is willing and capable of delegating and seeking advice from people who understand various domains better than them, and is a good enough judge to choose good people for such delegation and advice, then it could be at least much more efficient than a democracy or republic. Decisions could be made much faster. And such a leader could very well be better at making decisions that are better in the long term, even if they aren't in the short term. However, how do you find and appoint such a leader? And even if you somehow get such a leader, how do you ensure their successor is just as good? Selecting a leader based on military prowess definitely won't get you such a leader though.
        coldtea 4y ago
        >If that one person is wise, virtuous, and really prioritizes the people's best interest, and is willing and capable of delegating and seeking advice from people who understand various domains better than them, and is a good enough judge to choose good people for such delegation and advice, then it could be at least much more efficient than a democracy or republic. First, that's a big if. Second, it's the old pipe-dream that there are decisions that are on "best interest" for everybody, that can just be based on "domain knowledge", and not competing interests to be heard and balanced. >Decisions could be made much faster. That persons decisions. Not the ones people want. Basically you're described an infantilized population and a parent/nanny that knows what's best for them.
        4y ago
    - barrysteve 4y ago
      Nature doesn't have F35 fighter jets, fully autonomous drones that can duty cycle 24/7 for months, hackernews discussion boards built on the internet, that benefited from thousands of years of physics breakthroughs. Nukes, medicine, ect, you know the list of technologies.. Even in a war-economy, the majority of the civilian populace has to provide all the complicated logistics, food, services, entertainment, ect to keep the war effort going. Being a wage slave to a warlord isn't a magic fix to "egalitarianism". We can already live outside of egalitarianism. I can guarentee you Bill Gates, Stephen Hawkings and Jeff Bezos (and the lowest of society too) have no need for my input on their life, and don't know I exist.
- coldtea 4y ago
  It might, as history has cycles. But not because it will be replaced with something "better". Democracy just means everybody has a say on decisions affecting them and the society they are in. If your replacement is closer to "only informed people should have a say", that is even older then democracy, and is much worse in practice.
  - ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
    If we don't replace the current flavour of democracy with something better there won't be much society in a few years (10s, 100s). The next level beyond democracy is tiered, time-limited, and retractable sortism [1]: some kind of a return to roots (Athenian democracy), but with a twist. A quick way to sketch it would look like this: (i) no functionaries: run all the administrative jobs not in an office by Margaret and John, but in some cluster of computers; (ii) no political nominations: instead of having elections between Side A vs Side B (vs Side C in non-US countries), all the decision-making positions are up to vote by name and all the candidates are sorted out randomly from the totality of the populace (no candidate can have more than 2 mandates); (iii) negative vote: all ballots have a special box "No One" invalidating all the candidates (if the majority votes "No One") or reducing the duration of the mandate; (iv) the duration of the mandate correlated with voter turnout (if 30% of the populace vote, you don't get 100% of the 4-year mandate, you get 1.2 years of mandate); (v) the vote no longer a fact (you voted for X one time), but a process (you are maintaining your vote for X today also); when a majority of people retract their vote for a certain decision-maker they automatically lose their position of power. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
    - coldtea 4y ago
      >If we don't replace the current flavour of democracy with something better there won't be much society in a few years The current flavour of democracy is already not democratic as practiced in most countries (perhaps Switzerland is an exception). In the US it's career politicians with little accountability, billionaires and huge coporations with huge influence, paying politicians, media owned by said millionaires or fed BS by the government, a baroque system of chosing President, a failed educational system that doesn't teach kids to be active citizens, fossilized two party system supported by all kinds of powers and structures that the voters aren't allowed to change, and so on. Plus a charade of voting once every five years. If that's democracy, then yes, it should change: to real democracy. The options you describe would be some of the solutions to that. Of course those "wise persons in power who know better than us what's good for us" will prevent anything like that.
encomiast 4y ago
"Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct" So, what laws and constructs of civilized life are not an unnatural made up constructs? You seem to be suggesting there is some natural law that excludes things like intellectual property. Which natural laws, specifically, are you talking about?
- agalunar 4y ago
  If I have a physical object, you can't also have that physical object. That's natural in the sense that it follows from natural law (physics). If I have an idea, or a digital copy of something, you can also use that idea, or also get a digital copy, without depriving me of it. The only reason you can't use my idea or own a digital copy is because society decided that it would punish you for doing so – and that's unnatural in the sense that it doesn't follow from any inherent feature of reality.
  - encomiast 4y ago
    Sure, and also I am bigger and stronger than you. Therefore I take your physical object and you can't stop me. That's natural in the sense that it follows from natural law (physics). Natural laws are brutish and don't support the kind of society that most of us want to live in.
    - agalunar 4y ago
      I'm not entirely sure what point you're making. That's not physical law in the same sense – nothing compels you to take something from me (or prevents you from taking something from me if you're sneaky or strong enough, as you said). On the other hand, you and I can't both have the same object even if we wanted; it has nothing to do with ability or circumstance. edit: I should clarify that you and I can share something in the sense that we can freely give it back and forth, but if we have one shovel, we can't both be shovelling at the same time (and can't share it at all if we live far apart). And if we're talking about food, well, we can't both take the same bite of bread.
      - 4y ago
panic 4y ago
Are there any organizations working toward the abolition of intellectual property in the US? I agree with you that it's ridiculous and would love to do something about it.
- atomicUpdate 4y ago
  Assuming such an organization existed, what would stop someone from using their name, logo, etc. to also promote enhancing IP law and undermine they’re entire message? Presumably they wouldn’t be so hypocritical as to sue you for that, would they?
  - sicariusnoctis 4y ago
    If IP stops being a thing, we can always invent new laws to replace it such as "impersonation".
  - narwally 4y ago
    Trademark and copywright aren't quite the samee things. We can get rid of copywright while still allowing trademarks.
  - account42 4y ago
    Even besides you mixing up trademarks and copyrights, subverting the existing system in order to achive the opposite is not inherently hypocritical. E.g., the GPL is a copyright license.
- becquerel 4y ago
  Most anarchocommunists are against IP, so the wobblies (IWW) are a good shout.
- dogcomplex 4y ago
  Wait a few more months... let's see what the bittorrent and private crypto folks end up doing with AI... Either way, IP is going to either accept defeat or get very very loose in its claims, as the ability is almost here to just process a feature-length film, slightly modify each scene and replace script, camera angles, environments and actors with generic IP-free amalgamations, all while still capturing the tone and story... Images/text/code are already done for. Who's going to enforce that, and how much similarity do you need to infringe? Who's going to prove you processed that film when nothing about your movie is quite the same?
coldtea 4y ago
>Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct that will one day be seen as ridiculous as absolute monarchy is today. Not so sure about the monarchy thing, nominally yes, but we're certainly moving to renting everything content-related, and even back to political and corporate feudalism in many aspects, we might as well be peasants whose feudal lords own everything...
- dylan604 4y ago
  as it should be peasant. now get back to work!!! /s with the concept of 1%ers and how imbalanced the wealth distribution is, it doesn't really seem like it's much different than the days of feudal lords. it just seems like we've been tricked into thinking there was a middle class to keep the revolting to a minimum.
  - sacrosancty 4y ago
    [dead]
  - account42 4y ago
    In response to the [dead] sibling comment, who says that the 99% are having a satisfactory life? Less and less people can even affort to own a home. The has been very little reduction in the average work week and the retirement age is going up in most countries. Do you think e.g. the people currently protesting in France are doing so because they are satisfied with their lives?
andrewguenther 4y ago
Are you equating what the IA did here to "sharing with friends"?
- Timwi 4y ago
  I'm not OP, but personally, I can totally get behind that. It is not up to the law to tell me who can be my friend. If I decide that all of humanity are my friends then I should be able to share anything I want with them.
coding123 4y ago
So theoretically in your world I can work at a company, copy their code, data set up my own site, then trip on their power cord taking their site down on my last day, oops sorry.
jb1991 4y ago
Money is also an unnatural construct, most of civilization has succeeded and advanced due to abstract constructs, and this is one of mankind’s strengths. Learn more about this in the book Sapiens.
- goodlinks 4y ago
  Have you read the ragged trousered phillanthropists?
  - jb1991 4y ago
    No I haven’t, but if you’re suggesting that these so-called unnatural constructs can be damaging to the world, that is certainly true, but the flipside is that they also lead to great progress.
    - goodlinks 4y ago
      Imho Its a really good book, i think the first novel written by a non-noble, or something like that. Its over 100 years old but still very relevant today. Understanding how things have not changed in that time was powerful in helping me form opinions on what should change. Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ragged-Trousered_Philanthropists https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ragged-Trousered_Philant...
FredPret 4y ago
Other made-up constructs include human rights and democracy. Your argument does not make sense.
- goodlinks 4y ago
  Human rights and democracy are nothing like IP. Dont be shitty to people and listen to their voice are thing that any group of children playing may come up with them selves. Those same children will copy each other and build on ideas each other have. Thi child who demands no one can play a game or any derivative because they came up with it first, well, they are just not very nice.
  - FredPret 4y ago
    Ironically, if we built a lord-of-the-flies society (based on child "morality") we'll have an arbitrary concentration of power that'll make our IP rules look like a picnic.
    - goodlinks 4y ago
      Seems you are arguing a against something i didnt say? I guess you must believe you have some special ideas that you didnt get from anyone else at all, not based on any of you experiences and conversations with others that we all should pay you to use or refine (or even just repeat). And that you think it right to force these kinds of delusions on your children to stop them growing up stupid and naive?
  - klibertp 4y ago
    > Dont be shitty to people and listen to their voice are thing that any group of children playing may come up with them selves. Not my experience at all. There's always a leader, and there's always a bully, and - if you're lucky - they are not the same kid. If you're unlucky, the whole group is a shitshow of gruesome sadism and "playing" that can lead to serious injury and death. I mean, that's obviously anecdotal, but if children were so rational to invent things like human rights, why would we need caretakers and teachers?
dheera 4y ago
I fully agree with this. Information is just entropy, and isn't possible to own.
boredhedgehog 4y ago
Absolute monarchy doesn't work at all as an example of a thoroughly discredited intellectual concept. It's the political reality in various countries across the globe right now and frequently polls highly in all others. The word "king" has been dropped and replaced by "president" or "strong leader", but the concept is the same. And I think that's an important development to keep in mind when arguing against something like intellectual property, because these debates also frequently shift to battles over words instead of realities.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  Being political reality doesn't save something from being intellectually discredited. The fact that people need propaganda such as "president" as you mention supports that, because the very idea of monarchy and aristocracy are impossible to sell these days. These systems can only survive through lies and confusion or brute force and neither has anything to with having any intellectual credibility.
Thorentis 4y ago
I mostly agree with the conclusion, but your premise is shaky. Positive law (as in, laws which are of human creation) are not inherently bad because humans made them. Humans are more than capable of creating good laws which protect the common good against the worst parts of human nature. But they are also capable of creating bad laws. We have to analyse each law on its own merit.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct Property is an unnatural, made up construct. > that will one day be seen as ridiculous as absolute monarchy is today. Maybe, by just asserting untestable claims about future opinions isn’t an argument. > If we are going to allow it and penalize people who are doing natural human things like sharing with friends, there has to be a specific benefit to society in every instance. That’s a valid preference. I disagree, I think that a system of property law which provides net benefit in aggregate is adequate, requiring each individual exercise of property rights to be a net benefit in specific is too much overhead. > For example, pay taxes on copyrights and patents, increasing every year to reflect disturbance caused to society. I’d rather have both have short, free terms with copyright extendable by a tax, unless you are going to have a more general property tax than just on patents. But note that taxing property isn’t a sign that it is particularly “made up”, real property and some items of tangible personal property also have property taxes.
- Jochim 4y ago
  > I’d rather have both have short, free terms with copyright extendable by a tax, Why allow extension at all? The initial term serves as a societal "thank you for that cool idea". I'm not sure I agree that financial success should mean society continues to award you exclusive rights to the idea. Applying modern intellectual property law to "base" inventions illustrates how ridiculous it is. Should we be paying a tithe to the descendants of the person that built the first wheel? Would humanity have been better off if it had prevented anyone other than that individual from building wheels without their express permission? The answer is clearly no. That individual benefited personally from their invention and from the improvements to efficiency in the rest of their society. Restricting that would only have served to impede further innovation, prosperity, and quality of life.
  - account42 4y ago
    I think the idea of an extensible copyright is not to allow some people to maintain the monopoly for longer than normal but to have a mechanism for things to enter the public domain earlier if the authors are no longer interested in distributing the works themselves but mainly use the copyright to stifle others. This way you can set the base copyright duration shorther than you could otherwise without people complaining that some works take a while to become profitable. That said, I agree that it isn't neccesarily the best idea is it predominantly benefits the already well off who can better afford to gamble on the copyright extension fees. Personally I think zero copyright is probably the best since society benefits from sharing and remixes from day one. Look at how quickly memes propagate and consider if copyright was actually enforced there. Now consider if the could have the same creative mobility for the kinds of works where copyright is enforced. But I also don't see zero copyright as attainable within my lifetime as it would upend so many business models. Shorter copyrights (with or without extensions) are much more realistically attainable as for most copyright holders it might change the equation a bit but won't require them to immediately overthink their funding.
stodor89 4y ago
I get your point, but you make yourself an easy prey for literalists by using the words "natural" and "unnatural" like that. I mean, incurable diseases and nasty parasites are also natural, right?
magic_hamster 4y ago
I have conflicting thoughts about the state of the law. As someone who has created original IPs, and likes to earn back something for my effort, these laws are basically my only safety net. But they way they are laid out is extremely prohibitive, and blocks creativity. I am all for shortening the copyright period, and introducing a mechanism similar to that of musical covers to all protected works.
TaylorAlexander 4y ago
I think of it like trying to restrict what your neighbor can have for lunch. That’s not a thing we’re allowed to do today and the concept makes no sense to someone today. But you can limit what your neighbor engineers!
berniedurfee 4y ago
But doesn’t that conflict with the practicalities of economics? If everyone freely creates copies of what I produce, because they can, I can’t go buy things that can’t be easily replicated, like food or shelter. If IP is free for everyone, what do we do with all the people who need to live solely by producing IP?
- narwally 4y ago
  Do we actually need monetary incentives to get people to create new things. Won't people naturally keep creating new things as long as they aren't constrained by a more fundamental need? So we really just need to create a society where nobody has to worry about their basic needs like housing, food, healthcare, etc...and then people are free to create and are even free to fail while doing so.
  - berniedurfee 4y ago
    I agree, but until we get to that new society and new economic system, people need to consider the creators. IP is often all they have.
- realusername 4y ago
  Maybe there's a middle-ground between zero IP and the near perpetual IP we have right now. Additionally, we must keep in mind in those debates that piracy causing loss of revenue has never been proven and is an urban legend.
  - berniedurfee 4y ago
    Piracy (stealing) _has_ to cause loss of revenue. It’s right in the definition. There’s no way around it. There’s also a moral component to all this. Regardless of the calculus, if a creator says they don’t want to give their product away for free, that they’d like to be paid for every copy, we should respect that.
    - realusername 4y ago
rocqua 4y ago
There is a specific benefit to society. It allows artists to live of creating works meant for wide consumption. It means artists aren't limited to those who cater to the rich and those who are rich themselves. Not that I support current copyright law, but I do see that it brings some good. That good just doesn't outweigh the bad.
goto11 4y ago
> Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct Ownership of land is an unnatural, made up construct. In contrast to intellectual creations, land is limited. Therefore, granting ownership of land to a person is literally robbing other people of this land.
shadowgovt 4y ago
> Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct So is a "right to life" in a world where nature is red in tooth and claw, but it is an extremely useful unnatural, made-up construct. All laws are ideas had by people and backed by collective (or in some regimes, concentrated) force.
sacrosancty 4y ago
[dead]

PKop 4y ago

Democracy will one day be seen as ridiculous as absolute monarchy is today.

cat_plus_plus 4y ago
Quite possibly, society doesn't sit still, but it's still an improvement from before in modern constitutional republic context. Beats going to war to change rulers.
- PKop 4y ago
  >an improvement I'm sure some think it is. I think dictating power based on war ability makes way more sense than everyone having a say simply by virtue of breathing. Egalitarianism is not consistent with nature. But these things go in cycles, the flaws and contradictions will accumulate and the system will collapse eventually, like they all do.
  - michaelmrose 4y ago
    How do you run a society that way? Can I get a bigger house by mulching you in your own garden and telling your family to push on? Do we decide whether you can build an extension on your house by how good a shot the counties men are? Do Walmart and Cosco fight wars over the more desirable lots? This is not a serious suggestion.
    - PKop 4y ago
      Perhaps there is a synthesis of the two, where some get more say based on "war ability" (or other such competence) without actually having to engage in micro battles everywhere. Notice I was describing the criteria upon which decision-making and power is apportioned, not necessarily how it happens. There is a long standing tradition of opposition to mass democracy, particularly amongst the founders of my country so I'm in good company there. Ultimately whatever nominal system is in place, a governing elite arises one way or another...so debates about democracy are funny because in many ways power of the masses isn't real [0]. But to the degree democracy becomes "mass" is the degree to which is becomes worse. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35223884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35223884
  - gsk22 4y ago
    > I think dictating power based on war ability makes way more sense than everyone having a say simply by virtue of breathing. I honestly can't tell if you're trolling. In what world is it better to instead give all the say to one person? Especially a person selected solely by their prowess for violence (or in leading others to violence)?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - thayne 4y ago
      > In what world is it better to instead give all the say to one person? If that one person is wise, virtuous, and really prioritizes the people's best interest, and is willing and capable of delegating and seeking advice from people who understand various domains better than them, and is a good enough judge to choose good people for such delegation and advice, then it could be at least much more efficient than a democracy or republic. Decisions could be made much faster. And such a leader could very well be better at making decisions that are better in the long term, even if they aren't in the short term. However, how do you find and appoint such a leader? And even if you somehow get such a leader, how do you ensure their successor is just as good? Selecting a leader based on military prowess definitely won't get you such a leader though.
      - coldtea 4y ago
        >If that one person is wise, virtuous, and really prioritizes the people's best interest, and is willing and capable of delegating and seeking advice from people who understand various domains better than them, and is a good enough judge to choose good people for such delegation and advice, then it could be at least much more efficient than a democracy or republic. First, that's a big if. Second, it's the old pipe-dream that there are decisions that are on "best interest" for everybody, that can just be based on "domain knowledge", and not competing interests to be heard and balanced. >Decisions could be made much faster. That persons decisions. Not the ones people want. Basically you're described an infantilized population and a parent/nanny that knows what's best for them.
      - 4y ago
  - barrysteve 4y ago
    Nature doesn't have F35 fighter jets, fully autonomous drones that can duty cycle 24/7 for months, hackernews discussion boards built on the internet, that benefited from thousands of years of physics breakthroughs. Nukes, medicine, ect, you know the list of technologies.. Even in a war-economy, the majority of the civilian populace has to provide all the complicated logistics, food, services, entertainment, ect to keep the war effort going. Being a wage slave to a warlord isn't a magic fix to "egalitarianism". We can already live outside of egalitarianism. I can guarentee you Bill Gates, Stephen Hawkings and Jeff Bezos (and the lowest of society too) have no need for my input on their life, and don't know I exist.
coldtea 4y ago
It might, as history has cycles. But not because it will be replaced with something "better". Democracy just means everybody has a say on decisions affecting them and the society they are in. If your replacement is closer to "only informed people should have a say", that is even older then democracy, and is much worse in practice.
- ly3xqhl8g9 4y ago
  If we don't replace the current flavour of democracy with something better there won't be much society in a few years (10s, 100s). The next level beyond democracy is tiered, time-limited, and retractable sortism [1]: some kind of a return to roots (Athenian democracy), but with a twist. A quick way to sketch it would look like this: (i) no functionaries: run all the administrative jobs not in an office by Margaret and John, but in some cluster of computers; (ii) no political nominations: instead of having elections between Side A vs Side B (vs Side C in non-US countries), all the decision-making positions are up to vote by name and all the candidates are sorted out randomly from the totality of the populace (no candidate can have more than 2 mandates); (iii) negative vote: all ballots have a special box "No One" invalidating all the candidates (if the majority votes "No One") or reducing the duration of the mandate; (iv) the duration of the mandate correlated with voter turnout (if 30% of the populace vote, you don't get 100% of the 4-year mandate, you get 1.2 years of mandate); (v) the vote no longer a fact (you voted for X one time), but a process (you are maintaining your vote for X today also); when a majority of people retract their vote for a certain decision-maker they automatically lose their position of power. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
  - coldtea 4y ago
    >If we don't replace the current flavour of democracy with something better there won't be much society in a few years The current flavour of democracy is already not democratic as practiced in most countries (perhaps Switzerland is an exception). In the US it's career politicians with little accountability, billionaires and huge coporations with huge influence, paying politicians, media owned by said millionaires or fed BS by the government, a baroque system of chosing President, a failed educational system that doesn't teach kids to be active citizens, fossilized two party system supported by all kinds of powers and structures that the voters aren't allowed to change, and so on. Plus a charade of voting once every five years. If that's democracy, then yes, it should change: to real democracy. The options you describe would be some of the solutions to that. Of course those "wise persons in power who know better than us what's good for us" will prevent anything like that.

encomiast 4y ago

"Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct" So, what laws and constructs of civilized life are not an unnatural made up constructs? You seem to be suggesting there is some natural law that excludes things like intellectual property. Which natural laws, specifically, are you talking about?

agalunar 4y ago
If I have a physical object, you can't also have that physical object. That's natural in the sense that it follows from natural law (physics). If I have an idea, or a digital copy of something, you can also use that idea, or also get a digital copy, without depriving me of it. The only reason you can't use my idea or own a digital copy is because society decided that it would punish you for doing so – and that's unnatural in the sense that it doesn't follow from any inherent feature of reality.
- encomiast 4y ago
  Sure, and also I am bigger and stronger than you. Therefore I take your physical object and you can't stop me. That's natural in the sense that it follows from natural law (physics). Natural laws are brutish and don't support the kind of society that most of us want to live in.
  - agalunar 4y ago
    I'm not entirely sure what point you're making. That's not physical law in the same sense – nothing compels you to take something from me (or prevents you from taking something from me if you're sneaky or strong enough, as you said). On the other hand, you and I can't both have the same object even if we wanted; it has nothing to do with ability or circumstance. edit: I should clarify that you and I can share something in the sense that we can freely give it back and forth, but if we have one shovel, we can't both be shovelling at the same time (and can't share it at all if we live far apart). And if we're talking about food, well, we can't both take the same bite of bread.
    - 4y ago

panic 4y ago

Are there any organizations working toward the abolition of intellectual property in the US? I agree with you that it's ridiculous and would love to do something about it.

atomicUpdate 4y ago
Assuming such an organization existed, what would stop someone from using their name, logo, etc. to also promote enhancing IP law and undermine they’re entire message? Presumably they wouldn’t be so hypocritical as to sue you for that, would they?
- sicariusnoctis 4y ago
  If IP stops being a thing, we can always invent new laws to replace it such as "impersonation".
- narwally 4y ago
  Trademark and copywright aren't quite the samee things. We can get rid of copywright while still allowing trademarks.
- account42 4y ago
  Even besides you mixing up trademarks and copyrights, subverting the existing system in order to achive the opposite is not inherently hypocritical. E.g., the GPL is a copyright license.
becquerel 4y ago
Most anarchocommunists are against IP, so the wobblies (IWW) are a good shout.
dogcomplex 4y ago
Wait a few more months... let's see what the bittorrent and private crypto folks end up doing with AI... Either way, IP is going to either accept defeat or get very very loose in its claims, as the ability is almost here to just process a feature-length film, slightly modify each scene and replace script, camera angles, environments and actors with generic IP-free amalgamations, all while still capturing the tone and story... Images/text/code are already done for. Who's going to enforce that, and how much similarity do you need to infringe? Who's going to prove you processed that film when nothing about your movie is quite the same?

coldtea 4y ago

>Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct that will one day be seen as ridiculous as absolute monarchy is today. Not so sure about the monarchy thing, nominally yes, but we're certainly moving to renting everything content-related, and even back to political and corporate feudalism in many aspects, we might as well be peasants whose feudal lords own everything...

dylan604 4y ago
as it should be peasant. now get back to work!!! /s with the concept of 1%ers and how imbalanced the wealth distribution is, it doesn't really seem like it's much different than the days of feudal lords. it just seems like we've been tricked into thinking there was a middle class to keep the revolting to a minimum.
- sacrosancty 4y ago
  [dead]
- account42 4y ago
  In response to the [dead] sibling comment, who says that the 99% are having a satisfactory life? Less and less people can even affort to own a home. The has been very little reduction in the average work week and the retirement age is going up in most countries. Do you think e.g. the people currently protesting in France are doing so because they are satisfied with their lives?

andrewguenther 4y ago

Are you equating what the IA did here to "sharing with friends"?

Timwi 4y ago
I'm not OP, but personally, I can totally get behind that. It is not up to the law to tell me who can be my friend. If I decide that all of humanity are my friends then I should be able to share anything I want with them.

coding123 4y ago

So theoretically in your world I can work at a company, copy their code, data set up my own site, then trip on their power cord taking their site down on my last day, oops sorry.

jb1991 4y ago

Money is also an unnatural construct, most of civilization has succeeded and advanced due to abstract constructs, and this is one of mankind’s strengths. Learn more about this in the book Sapiens.

goodlinks 4y ago
Have you read the ragged trousered phillanthropists?
- jb1991 4y ago
  No I haven’t, but if you’re suggesting that these so-called unnatural constructs can be damaging to the world, that is certainly true, but the flipside is that they also lead to great progress.
  - goodlinks 4y ago
    Imho Its a really good book, i think the first novel written by a non-noble, or something like that. Its over 100 years old but still very relevant today. Understanding how things have not changed in that time was powerful in helping me form opinions on what should change. Edit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ragged-Trousered_Philanthropists https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ragged-Trousered_Philant...

FredPret 4y ago

Other made-up constructs include human rights and democracy. Your argument does not make sense.

goodlinks 4y ago
Human rights and democracy are nothing like IP. Dont be shitty to people and listen to their voice are thing that any group of children playing may come up with them selves. Those same children will copy each other and build on ideas each other have. Thi child who demands no one can play a game or any derivative because they came up with it first, well, they are just not very nice.
- FredPret 4y ago
  Ironically, if we built a lord-of-the-flies society (based on child "morality") we'll have an arbitrary concentration of power that'll make our IP rules look like a picnic.
  - goodlinks 4y ago
    Seems you are arguing a against something i didnt say? I guess you must believe you have some special ideas that you didnt get from anyone else at all, not based on any of you experiences and conversations with others that we all should pay you to use or refine (or even just repeat). And that you think it right to force these kinds of delusions on your children to stop them growing up stupid and naive?
- klibertp 4y ago
  > Dont be shitty to people and listen to their voice are thing that any group of children playing may come up with them selves. Not my experience at all. There's always a leader, and there's always a bully, and - if you're lucky - they are not the same kid. If you're unlucky, the whole group is a shitshow of gruesome sadism and "playing" that can lead to serious injury and death. I mean, that's obviously anecdotal, but if children were so rational to invent things like human rights, why would we need caretakers and teachers?

dheera 4y ago

I fully agree with this. Information is just entropy, and isn't possible to own.

boredhedgehog 4y ago

Absolute monarchy doesn't work at all as an example of a thoroughly discredited intellectual concept. It's the political reality in various countries across the globe right now and frequently polls highly in all others. The word "king" has been dropped and replaced by "president" or "strong leader", but the concept is the same. And I think that's an important development to keep in mind when arguing against something like intellectual property, because these debates also frequently shift to battles over words instead of realities.

guerrilla 4y ago
Being political reality doesn't save something from being intellectually discredited. The fact that people need propaganda such as "president" as you mention supports that, because the very idea of monarchy and aristocracy are impossible to sell these days. These systems can only survive through lies and confusion or brute force and neither has anything to with having any intellectual credibility.

Thorentis 4y ago

I mostly agree with the conclusion, but your premise is shaky. Positive law (as in, laws which are of human creation) are not inherently bad because humans made them. Humans are more than capable of creating good laws which protect the common good against the worst parts of human nature. But they are also capable of creating bad laws. We have to analyse each law on its own merit.

dragonwriter 4y ago

> Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct Property is an unnatural, made up construct. > that will one day be seen as ridiculous as absolute monarchy is today. Maybe, by just asserting untestable claims about future opinions isn’t an argument. > If we are going to allow it and penalize people who are doing natural human things like sharing with friends, there has to be a specific benefit to society in every instance. That’s a valid preference. I disagree, I think that a system of property law which provides net benefit in aggregate is adequate, requiring each individual exercise of property rights to be a net benefit in specific is too much overhead. > For example, pay taxes on copyrights and patents, increasing every year to reflect disturbance caused to society. I’d rather have both have short, free terms with copyright extendable by a tax, unless you are going to have a more general property tax than just on patents. But note that taxing property isn’t a sign that it is particularly “made up”, real property and some items of tangible personal property also have property taxes.

Jochim 4y ago
> I’d rather have both have short, free terms with copyright extendable by a tax, Why allow extension at all? The initial term serves as a societal "thank you for that cool idea". I'm not sure I agree that financial success should mean society continues to award you exclusive rights to the idea. Applying modern intellectual property law to "base" inventions illustrates how ridiculous it is. Should we be paying a tithe to the descendants of the person that built the first wheel? Would humanity have been better off if it had prevented anyone other than that individual from building wheels without their express permission? The answer is clearly no. That individual benefited personally from their invention and from the improvements to efficiency in the rest of their society. Restricting that would only have served to impede further innovation, prosperity, and quality of life.
- account42 4y ago
  I think the idea of an extensible copyright is not to allow some people to maintain the monopoly for longer than normal but to have a mechanism for things to enter the public domain earlier if the authors are no longer interested in distributing the works themselves but mainly use the copyright to stifle others. This way you can set the base copyright duration shorther than you could otherwise without people complaining that some works take a while to become profitable. That said, I agree that it isn't neccesarily the best idea is it predominantly benefits the already well off who can better afford to gamble on the copyright extension fees. Personally I think zero copyright is probably the best since society benefits from sharing and remixes from day one. Look at how quickly memes propagate and consider if copyright was actually enforced there. Now consider if the could have the same creative mobility for the kinds of works where copyright is enforced. But I also don't see zero copyright as attainable within my lifetime as it would upend so many business models. Shorter copyrights (with or without extensions) are much more realistically attainable as for most copyright holders it might change the equation a bit but won't require them to immediately overthink their funding.

stodor89 4y ago

I get your point, but you make yourself an easy prey for literalists by using the words "natural" and "unnatural" like that. I mean, incurable diseases and nasty parasites are also natural, right?

magic_hamster 4y ago

I have conflicting thoughts about the state of the law. As someone who has created original IPs, and likes to earn back something for my effort, these laws are basically my only safety net. But they way they are laid out is extremely prohibitive, and blocks creativity. I am all for shortening the copyright period, and introducing a mechanism similar to that of musical covers to all protected works.

TaylorAlexander 4y ago

I think of it like trying to restrict what your neighbor can have for lunch. That’s not a thing we’re allowed to do today and the concept makes no sense to someone today. But you can limit what your neighbor engineers!

berniedurfee 4y ago

But doesn’t that conflict with the practicalities of economics? If everyone freely creates copies of what I produce, because they can, I can’t go buy things that can’t be easily replicated, like food or shelter. If IP is free for everyone, what do we do with all the people who need to live solely by producing IP?

narwally 4y ago
Do we actually need monetary incentives to get people to create new things. Won't people naturally keep creating new things as long as they aren't constrained by a more fundamental need? So we really just need to create a society where nobody has to worry about their basic needs like housing, food, healthcare, etc...and then people are free to create and are even free to fail while doing so.
- berniedurfee 4y ago
  I agree, but until we get to that new society and new economic system, people need to consider the creators. IP is often all they have.
realusername 4y ago
Maybe there's a middle-ground between zero IP and the near perpetual IP we have right now. Additionally, we must keep in mind in those debates that piracy causing loss of revenue has never been proven and is an urban legend.
- berniedurfee 4y ago
  Piracy (stealing) _has_ to cause loss of revenue. It’s right in the definition. There’s no way around it. There’s also a moral component to all this. Regardless of the calculus, if a creator says they don’t want to give their product away for free, that they’d like to be paid for every copy, we should respect that.
  - realusername 4y ago

rocqua 4y ago

There is a specific benefit to society. It allows artists to live of creating works meant for wide consumption. It means artists aren't limited to those who cater to the rich and those who are rich themselves. Not that I support current copyright law, but I do see that it brings some good. That good just doesn't outweigh the bad.

goto11 4y ago

> Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct Ownership of land is an unnatural, made up construct. In contrast to intellectual creations, land is limited. Therefore, granting ownership of land to a person is literally robbing other people of this land.

shadowgovt 4y ago

> Intellectual property is an unnatural, made up construct So is a "right to life" in a world where nature is red in tooth and claw, but it is an extremely useful unnatural, made-up construct. All laws are ideas had by people and backed by collective (or in some regimes, concentrated) force.

sacrosancty 4y ago

[dead]