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>Society can live without "AI", much less "AI" with no respect for peoples' properties IP is not real property; it's fundamentally different in an economic sen

>Society can live without "AI", much less "AI" with no respect for peoples' properties IP is not real property; it's fundamentally different in an economic sense. If you have an apple and I steal it from you, you can no longer consume that apple. If you have poem and I make a copy of it, you still can consume (read) the poem. The notion of IP is fundamentally incompatible with a free society, because it necessitates a huge apparatus for violence and surveillance such that if Bob memorises your poem and tells it to his friend without your permission you're able to notice this and punish Bob for doing so.

LiquidPolymer 4y ago
This is fundamentally incorrect. I'd also wager that more than 50% of the commenters on here benefit from robust IP protection.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  While this is true, 100% of the commenters here also give up a "natural" right to copy certain information for robust IP protection. At the extreme end, this can result in absurdities like the attempt to ban dissemination of the DeCSS key for DVDs.
  - EntrePrescott 4y ago
    > give up a "natural" right to copy certain information Practical as it may be, that's not a natural right but merely a physical possibility. More generally, the concept of natural rights - except for a very narrow niche of special subjects closely centered on the individual's own life and bodily autonomy - is a shortcut to total subjectivity at best. And even for that very narrow niche, the "rights" part is a normative civilizational convention/construct, whereas nature conspicuously ignores such "rights" (as do humans for the most part when it comes to other species)
- chrismsimpson 4y ago
  Many here benefit from the industry and economy associated with IP, only a very small few actually benefit from ownership of IP.
  - falcolas 4y ago
    Without ownership of IP, industry and economy don’t exist. You can’t sell or rent something you don’t own.
waboremo 4y ago
You haven't illustrated how they're fundamentally different, especially not in the context of "necessitating a huge apparatus for violence and surveillance", because guess what's happening when I can no longer consume that apple?
- tenebrisalietum 4y ago
  X has an apple, Y takes it from X (steal), X no longer has an apple. Economic scarcity is inherent in the apple. X has an mp3 file, Y copies it from X (copy), X still has an mp3 file. Economic scarcity is not inherent in the mp3 file, it has to be artificially enforced. Don't know how it can be any clearer than that. Economic scarcity may be inherent in the service of creating the mp3 file, because it consumes time and other physical inputs. The "correct" and most straightforward way to sell services is commissioning - 1 performance, 1 payment. Intellectual property tries to make the output of a service subject to the same attributes as a physical salable object, and the artifice in American law has a specific Constitutional purpose: to "promote the progress of science and useful arts." Consider this: Let's say you needed a repair on your house - this is basically a "I want this, let me pay you to do it" commission arrangement. Imagine if you had to continue to pay daily for the "rights" of using the repair. Honestly this is promoting the progress of "useful arts" more than suing kids for downloading mp3 files that they wouldn't pay for anyway.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    X has an orchard. Y walks through the orchard. X still has an orchard, but says "you have to pay me to walk there, it's my orchard". Economic scarcity is not inherent in access to the orchard, but X still argues for the artificial enforcement of exclusive rights over it, and must initiate force against Y in order to extract payment for walking on the land. If you are arguing that there is something inherently wrong with using legal systems and implied threat of violence to extract fees for the use of services you have made available to the public, you are basically arguing for the abolition of nearly all of the modern day concept of property, not just IP.
    - 4y ago
blibble 4y ago
the concept of physical property ownership is as artificial as intellectual property ownership plenty of societies have existed without it
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  Possession is 9/10 of the law
- brookst 4y ago
  Neither of these statements is true. Physical property is zero sum. If you take something from me, I no longer have it. IP has zero marginal cost of duplication; if you take something from me, we both have it. Physical property ownership is nearly universal, and is probably related to the way humans are more loss averse than gain seeking (losing $100 is more bad than gaining $100 is good). There have been some societies with leased, or even no concept of physical property ownership, but those are exceptionally rare and can hardly be held up as equally aligned with human nature. IP ownership, however, is recent and very artificial. The idea that any random person is prohibited from singing a song they heard or copying a painting is new to the past couple of hundred years, to the best of my knowledge. It’s fine to be opposed to both physical property and IP, but let’s not equate the two as far as the history of the concepts goes. They’re very different.
  - matwood 4y ago
    For a long time whoever was stronger 'owned' the physical property. I assume you don't want to go back to that time, so now we have laws defining ownership. It's been decided to have these same laws apply to IP. You may disagree with that last statement, but I think it's incorrect to use recency or artificial as the argument when current laws are also the only thing letting many people own their physical property today.
    - CSMastermind 4y ago
      > For a long time whoever was stronger 'owned' the physical property. This is both still the case today and probably was never the case in the way that I think a lot of people would read that sentence. Property rights have always been maintained, to some extent, through force. This is the case today. The state maintains a monopoly on violence and uses it to enforce property rights. It's also true that humans, generally, hold some innate concept of fairness which leads to us generally respecting each others property. The use of violence was only ever to handle the edge cases as a last resort. And "stronger" doesn't imply that the single physically strongest individual maintained ownership. Humans are social creatures who have always banded together and lended resources and support to individuals they trusted to be the most fair when making decisions. This only extremely rarely was the single physically strongest individual.
friendzis 4y ago
> because it necessitates a huge apparatus for violence and surveillance What prevents Mallory from taking three friends, coming to your house and beating you with a $5 wrench until you give up the property?
- AlecSchueler 4y ago
  The law.
  - matwood 4y ago
    The same thing that treats IP as property.
  - friendzis 4y ago
    The law is is incapable of enforcement. It's the same "huge apparatus for violence" that backs enforcement of laws.
delusional 4y ago
That's a little reductive is it not? I'd like to propose a thought experiment. Suppose you own a house. One day you decide to go on a vacation for a week and like most people you don't do anything with your house during that time. You just pack your stuff and leave. During that week somebody else sees that your house is empty and comes in to live in it. They go through your stuff, watches your TV, maybe even wears your clothes. They're careful to leave before you get back home, and they leave it exactly as it was. In fact you can't even notice they were there. Has that hypothetical person violated your property rights? In your model I'd argue they haven't. You haven't incurred any costs, and you didn't lose anything. Yet I'd argue that most people have some intuitive sense that your property right has indeed been violated.
- dmd 4y ago
  If there is literally no evidence whatsoever - none, not even microscopic evidence - then no, it hasn't, and I'd argue that this has happened to your house every time you've ever left it. In fact, right now, there are people doing wildly inappropriate things in every room of your house you're not in, who disappear if you go look. Prove me wrong.
- pixl97 4y ago
  "If it walks like a duck" Now, with physical items 'personal' entropy is an unavoidable outcome of the universe we live in. Even more so, if physics behaved like your example, why would we have ever evolved to give a shit if someone came into our house and used it if we couldn't tell. In this universe society would have evolved to share much more freely because it would have been a massive benefit for everyone. This is what humanity has a problem with now. We still have the ancient lines of thought that we live in a world filled with shortages and if we don't acquire as much as possible as quickly as possible we're going to die. Meanwhile technology has and is progressing to a point that everyone on the planet could have a perfectly nice life except for the fact a few of us want to own everything all for themselves.
- jefftk 4y ago
  All of my worries in your scenario come from cases where the premises of your hypothetical are violated: they break my stuff, they don't leave, they take things, etc. (The more a hypothetical requires you to assume things operating very differently from how they would in real life, the less useful the intuitions it generates are.)
PurpleRamen 4y ago
> IP is not real property Most Physical property is not real property either. It's all just legal voodoo to protect people's interest. The only real property is the one you can protect on your own with your own hands, everything else is protected by the law. > If you have an apple and I steal it from you, you can no longer consume that apple. The apple is usually the result of work, time, resources... > If you have poem and I make a copy of it, you still can consume (read) the poem. ...and the poem is also the result of work, time, and maybe resources. IP exists, because the creators invests into them and need an return for this investment to make a living, and maybe next time can create something even better. > The notion of IP is fundamentally incompatible with a free society The general notion of property and laws is fundamentally incompatible with a free society. But we still need it because Humans are little greedy monsters, and somehow we all need to make a living.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ddj231 4y ago
I think one thing that is missed is that we do live in a free society and so when you disincentivize something there is less reason to invest in it professionally. If there is no IP and we have a free for all, why should I invest time and effort in creating non-physical creative goods as work? (principally: "a laborer deserves his wages")

LiquidPolymer 4y ago

This is fundamentally incorrect. I'd also wager that more than 50% of the commenters on here benefit from robust IP protection.

AlexandrB 4y ago
While this is true, 100% of the commenters here also give up a "natural" right to copy certain information for robust IP protection. At the extreme end, this can result in absurdities like the attempt to ban dissemination of the DeCSS key for DVDs.
- EntrePrescott 4y ago
  > give up a "natural" right to copy certain information Practical as it may be, that's not a natural right but merely a physical possibility. More generally, the concept of natural rights - except for a very narrow niche of special subjects closely centered on the individual's own life and bodily autonomy - is a shortcut to total subjectivity at best. And even for that very narrow niche, the "rights" part is a normative civilizational convention/construct, whereas nature conspicuously ignores such "rights" (as do humans for the most part when it comes to other species)
chrismsimpson 4y ago
Many here benefit from the industry and economy associated with IP, only a very small few actually benefit from ownership of IP.
- falcolas 4y ago
  Without ownership of IP, industry and economy don’t exist. You can’t sell or rent something you don’t own.

waboremo 4y ago

You haven't illustrated how they're fundamentally different, especially not in the context of "necessitating a huge apparatus for violence and surveillance", because guess what's happening when I can no longer consume that apple?

tenebrisalietum 4y ago
X has an apple, Y takes it from X (steal), X no longer has an apple. Economic scarcity is inherent in the apple. X has an mp3 file, Y copies it from X (copy), X still has an mp3 file. Economic scarcity is not inherent in the mp3 file, it has to be artificially enforced. Don't know how it can be any clearer than that. Economic scarcity may be inherent in the service of creating the mp3 file, because it consumes time and other physical inputs. The "correct" and most straightforward way to sell services is commissioning - 1 performance, 1 payment. Intellectual property tries to make the output of a service subject to the same attributes as a physical salable object, and the artifice in American law has a specific Constitutional purpose: to "promote the progress of science and useful arts." Consider this: Let's say you needed a repair on your house - this is basically a "I want this, let me pay you to do it" commission arrangement. Imagine if you had to continue to pay daily for the "rights" of using the repair. Honestly this is promoting the progress of "useful arts" more than suing kids for downloading mp3 files that they wouldn't pay for anyway.
- notahacker 4y ago
  X has an orchard. Y walks through the orchard. X still has an orchard, but says "you have to pay me to walk there, it's my orchard". Economic scarcity is not inherent in access to the orchard, but X still argues for the artificial enforcement of exclusive rights over it, and must initiate force against Y in order to extract payment for walking on the land. If you are arguing that there is something inherently wrong with using legal systems and implied threat of violence to extract fees for the use of services you have made available to the public, you are basically arguing for the abolition of nearly all of the modern day concept of property, not just IP.
  - 4y ago

blibble 4y ago

the concept of physical property ownership is as artificial as intellectual property ownership plenty of societies have existed without it

pcthrowaway 4y ago
Possession is 9/10 of the law
brookst 4y ago
Neither of these statements is true. Physical property is zero sum. If you take something from me, I no longer have it. IP has zero marginal cost of duplication; if you take something from me, we both have it. Physical property ownership is nearly universal, and is probably related to the way humans are more loss averse than gain seeking (losing $100 is more bad than gaining $100 is good). There have been some societies with leased, or even no concept of physical property ownership, but those are exceptionally rare and can hardly be held up as equally aligned with human nature. IP ownership, however, is recent and very artificial. The idea that any random person is prohibited from singing a song they heard or copying a painting is new to the past couple of hundred years, to the best of my knowledge. It’s fine to be opposed to both physical property and IP, but let’s not equate the two as far as the history of the concepts goes. They’re very different.
- matwood 4y ago
  For a long time whoever was stronger 'owned' the physical property. I assume you don't want to go back to that time, so now we have laws defining ownership. It's been decided to have these same laws apply to IP. You may disagree with that last statement, but I think it's incorrect to use recency or artificial as the argument when current laws are also the only thing letting many people own their physical property today.
  - CSMastermind 4y ago
    > For a long time whoever was stronger 'owned' the physical property. This is both still the case today and probably was never the case in the way that I think a lot of people would read that sentence. Property rights have always been maintained, to some extent, through force. This is the case today. The state maintains a monopoly on violence and uses it to enforce property rights. It's also true that humans, generally, hold some innate concept of fairness which leads to us generally respecting each others property. The use of violence was only ever to handle the edge cases as a last resort. And "stronger" doesn't imply that the single physically strongest individual maintained ownership. Humans are social creatures who have always banded together and lended resources and support to individuals they trusted to be the most fair when making decisions. This only extremely rarely was the single physically strongest individual.

friendzis 4y ago

> because it necessitates a huge apparatus for violence and surveillance What prevents Mallory from taking three friends, coming to your house and beating you with a $5 wrench until you give up the property?

AlecSchueler 4y ago
The law.
- matwood 4y ago
  The same thing that treats IP as property.
- friendzis 4y ago
  The law is is incapable of enforcement. It's the same "huge apparatus for violence" that backs enforcement of laws.

delusional 4y ago

That's a little reductive is it not? I'd like to propose a thought experiment. Suppose you own a house. One day you decide to go on a vacation for a week and like most people you don't do anything with your house during that time. You just pack your stuff and leave. During that week somebody else sees that your house is empty and comes in to live in it. They go through your stuff, watches your TV, maybe even wears your clothes. They're careful to leave before you get back home, and they leave it exactly as it was. In fact you can't even notice they were there. Has that hypothetical person violated your property rights? In your model I'd argue they haven't. You haven't incurred any costs, and you didn't lose anything. Yet I'd argue that most people have some intuitive sense that your property right has indeed been violated.

dmd 4y ago
If there is literally no evidence whatsoever - none, not even microscopic evidence - then no, it hasn't, and I'd argue that this has happened to your house every time you've ever left it. In fact, right now, there are people doing wildly inappropriate things in every room of your house you're not in, who disappear if you go look. Prove me wrong.
pixl97 4y ago
"If it walks like a duck" Now, with physical items 'personal' entropy is an unavoidable outcome of the universe we live in. Even more so, if physics behaved like your example, why would we have ever evolved to give a shit if someone came into our house and used it if we couldn't tell. In this universe society would have evolved to share much more freely because it would have been a massive benefit for everyone. This is what humanity has a problem with now. We still have the ancient lines of thought that we live in a world filled with shortages and if we don't acquire as much as possible as quickly as possible we're going to die. Meanwhile technology has and is progressing to a point that everyone on the planet could have a perfectly nice life except for the fact a few of us want to own everything all for themselves.
jefftk 4y ago
All of my worries in your scenario come from cases where the premises of your hypothetical are violated: they break my stuff, they don't leave, they take things, etc. (The more a hypothetical requires you to assume things operating very differently from how they would in real life, the less useful the intuitions it generates are.)

PurpleRamen 4y ago

> IP is not real property Most Physical property is not real property either. It's all just legal voodoo to protect people's interest. The only real property is the one you can protect on your own with your own hands, everything else is protected by the law. > If you have an apple and I steal it from you, you can no longer consume that apple. The apple is usually the result of work, time, resources... > If you have poem and I make a copy of it, you still can consume (read) the poem. ...and the poem is also the result of work, time, and maybe resources. IP exists, because the creators invests into them and need an return for this investment to make a living, and maybe next time can create something even better. > The notion of IP is fundamentally incompatible with a free society The general notion of property and laws is fundamentally incompatible with a free society. But we still need it because Humans are little greedy monsters, and somehow we all need to make a living.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ddj231 4y ago

I think one thing that is missed is that we do live in a free society and so when you disincentivize something there is less reason to invest in it professionally. If there is no IP and we have a free for all, why should I invest time and effort in creating non-physical creative goods as work? (principally: "a laborer deserves his wages")