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Fully agree that the existing copyright and intellectual property systems are dire need of deep reform. But to get people on board, you can't just propose burn

Fully agree that the existing copyright and intellectual property systems are dire need of deep reform. But to get people on board, you can't just propose burning it all down, you need to point to a viable alternative. Say, limiting copyrights to something sane like 15 or 30 years. Or making it easier to invalidate obvious or trivial patents. Or do you really want to do away with notions of intellectual property altogether? You can make an argument for that, but there would lead to deep economic changes, and you need to anticipate what the end result would look like. You still need some way to encourage the creation of new content. Pointing out that our copyright/IP system is broken is easy. And you're right, it's totally broken! Coming up with a fix is hard work.

TaylorAlexander 3y ago
I don’t think we need to use the legal system to encourage creation of new content! That’s a natural thing people do. In fact there’s a lot of artistic remixing that is illegal or ambiguously legal under the current copyright regime that can be a powerful form of expression. I really don’t think we need government policy to encourage artists to create art. (At least not of this sort - I am all for art grants.)
Zaskoda 3y ago
> But to get people on board, you can't just propose burning it all down, you need to point to a viable alternative. This may be true for most people, I don't know. However, I personally am fully on board the "burn it all down" train and have been for a while.
capr 3y ago
Pointing out that IP is broken is _not_ easy because most people believe in the contradictory notion of intellectual property, you included, not knowing the legal history of IP, the legal and economic history of the concept of property, and so on. If it were easy, it would be obvious to everybody that 1) IP law is immoral and 2) nothing bad would happen if it's abolished outright. Here's a free ebook on the subject, written by a patent lawyer no less: https://mises.org/library/against-intellectual-property-0 https://mises.org/library/against-intellectual-property-0
- mike_d 3y ago
  > 2) nothing bad would happen if it's abolished outright. It is interesting that people living in the places with the weakest IP laws will pay a premium to import baby formula from the places with the strictest laws. > Here's a free ebook on the subject Of course it is some right-libertarian wonk piece.
  - immibis 3y ago
    This has nothing to do with IP laws, and everything to do with baby formula laws. You don't seriously think that without the ability to sell the recipe, nobody would invent a safe and effective baby formula, right?
    - mike_d 3y ago
      I'm not sure you fully grasp all the dimensions of IP law. If you have two brands of baby formula, Death brand that kills babies, and OK brand that is perfectly fine, and you start putting Death brand in fake cans labeled OK brand - that is absolutely an IP enforcement issue. The desire of OK brand to protect their brand, and profits, combined with reasonable IP laws allows them to lead enforcement actions and protect consumers.
      - immibis 3y ago
        That is absolutely not the kind of intellectual property that anyone hates. The kind of intellectual property we are talking about is the one where Death isn't allowed to make baby formula that doesn't kill babies, because OK patented making baby formula that doesn't kill babies and won't give them a license.
      - xigoi 3y ago
        > you start putting Death brand in fake cans labeled OK brand - that is absolutely an IP enforcement issue. This is a matter of trademark, which is completely orthogonal to copyright and nobody is protesting against it here.
      - 3y ago
Frost1x 3y ago
>Pointing out that our copyright/IP system is broken is easy. And you're right, it's totally broken! Coming up with a fix is hard work. The problem I have with these arguments is they ultimately tend to boil down to the devil you know or the devil you don't know. We keep claiming when something is broken we must provide a "fix" and the assumption is that fix has to be better than the current approach. There's pretty much no way to guarantee this because the systems in place are the only systems with evidence. So, because we have other ideas, we dare not try them because they have to "fix" the problem. The amount of inertia that keeps corruption in motion bothers me and at a fundamental level most of the inertia comes down, ironically, back to property ownership. If we abolish copyright or change it we have to make sure things are fair/equitable. Well sure, that's ideal, but what we have isn't even remotely fair and equitable anymore, so even something broken is likely an improvement. We have no willingness as a society to try some modifications and be willing to accept failure, then shift to the next modification and iterate around until we get something sane in place. As such, the systems in place remain in place and more and more holes are found to exploit as time progress. Our systems need to be more adaptable. Founders of the country understood that which is why they made the legal system a legal adaptable system. The question has always been though, what is the threshold? We've played it safe so long that much of the entire system designed to adapt to fix these issues has itself been targeted and gummed up intentionally to prevent that.
pessimizer 3y ago
> You still need some way to encourage the creation of new content. Do you? What's the argument for this? Is there some sort of extreme shortage of creative work that the state should find it necessary to encourage it? How about we end copyright, and if there's ever a problem, we offer copyrights for a short period to fluff the commons up again. A copyright anti-holiday, as it were. Instead we do the opposite: automatically copyright everything anyone produces, and make it very difficult to surrender your copyright (unless Google or Microsoft want it, then if you object you're literally a Luddite caveman who is trying to turn back the clock on modernity because you're old, stupid, and afraid of fire.)

TaylorAlexander 3y ago

I don’t think we need to use the legal system to encourage creation of new content! That’s a natural thing people do. In fact there’s a lot of artistic remixing that is illegal or ambiguously legal under the current copyright regime that can be a powerful form of expression. I really don’t think we need government policy to encourage artists to create art. (At least not of this sort - I am all for art grants.)

Zaskoda 3y ago

> But to get people on board, you can't just propose burning it all down, you need to point to a viable alternative. This may be true for most people, I don't know. However, I personally am fully on board the "burn it all down" train and have been for a while.

capr 3y ago

Pointing out that IP is broken is _not_ easy because most people believe in the contradictory notion of intellectual property, you included, not knowing the legal history of IP, the legal and economic history of the concept of property, and so on. If it were easy, it would be obvious to everybody that 1) IP law is immoral and 2) nothing bad would happen if it's abolished outright. Here's a free ebook on the subject, written by a patent lawyer no less: https://mises.org/library/against-intellectual-property-0 https://mises.org/library/against-intellectual-property-0

mike_d 3y ago
> 2) nothing bad would happen if it's abolished outright. It is interesting that people living in the places with the weakest IP laws will pay a premium to import baby formula from the places with the strictest laws. > Here's a free ebook on the subject Of course it is some right-libertarian wonk piece.
- immibis 3y ago
  This has nothing to do with IP laws, and everything to do with baby formula laws. You don't seriously think that without the ability to sell the recipe, nobody would invent a safe and effective baby formula, right?
  - mike_d 3y ago
    I'm not sure you fully grasp all the dimensions of IP law. If you have two brands of baby formula, Death brand that kills babies, and OK brand that is perfectly fine, and you start putting Death brand in fake cans labeled OK brand - that is absolutely an IP enforcement issue. The desire of OK brand to protect their brand, and profits, combined with reasonable IP laws allows them to lead enforcement actions and protect consumers.
    - immibis 3y ago
      That is absolutely not the kind of intellectual property that anyone hates. The kind of intellectual property we are talking about is the one where Death isn't allowed to make baby formula that doesn't kill babies, because OK patented making baby formula that doesn't kill babies and won't give them a license.
    - xigoi 3y ago
      > you start putting Death brand in fake cans labeled OK brand - that is absolutely an IP enforcement issue. This is a matter of trademark, which is completely orthogonal to copyright and nobody is protesting against it here.
    - 3y ago

Frost1x 3y ago

>Pointing out that our copyright/IP system is broken is easy. And you're right, it's totally broken! Coming up with a fix is hard work. The problem I have with these arguments is they ultimately tend to boil down to the devil you know or the devil you don't know. We keep claiming when something is broken we must provide a "fix" and the assumption is that fix has to be better than the current approach. There's pretty much no way to guarantee this because the systems in place are the only systems with evidence. So, because we have other ideas, we dare not try them because they have to "fix" the problem. The amount of inertia that keeps corruption in motion bothers me and at a fundamental level most of the inertia comes down, ironically, back to property ownership. If we abolish copyright or change it we have to make sure things are fair/equitable. Well sure, that's ideal, but what we have isn't even remotely fair and equitable anymore, so even something broken is likely an improvement. We have no willingness as a society to try some modifications and be willing to accept failure, then shift to the next modification and iterate around until we get something sane in place. As such, the systems in place remain in place and more and more holes are found to exploit as time progress. Our systems need to be more adaptable. Founders of the country understood that which is why they made the legal system a legal adaptable system. The question has always been though, what is the threshold? We've played it safe so long that much of the entire system designed to adapt to fix these issues has itself been targeted and gummed up intentionally to prevent that.

pessimizer 3y ago

> You still need some way to encourage the creation of new content. Do you? What's the argument for this? Is there some sort of extreme shortage of creative work that the state should find it necessary to encourage it? How about we end copyright, and if there's ever a problem, we offer copyrights for a short period to fluff the commons up again. A copyright anti-holiday, as it were. Instead we do the opposite: automatically copyright everything anyone produces, and make it very difficult to surrender your copyright (unless Google or Microsoft want it, then if you object you're literally a Luddite caveman who is trying to turn back the clock on modernity because you're old, stupid, and afraid of fire.)