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Copyright is a logical consequence of property rights. I'd agree that property rights hold back industry and trade but if you want to abolish property rights, y

by hnbad 2y ago

Copyright is a logical consequence of property rights. I'd agree that property rights hold back industry and trade but if you want to abolish property rights, you first have to decommodify the essentials like food, housing, public infrastructure and healthcare, because unleashing the market when it has control over all of these is going to have some very undesirable consequences.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
Copyright isn't a property right. Property rights are rivalrous. If you own a sandwich and a thousand other people want to eat your sandwich, only one person can, so property rights exist to define who gets to choose who gets to eat the sandwich. Writings and discoveries are non-rivalrous. To quote the first head of the US Patent Office: > He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. The term "intellectual property" is an attempt to conflate these things, to justify net-destructive money grabs like retroactive copyright term extensions, because traditional property rights don't expire but copyrights explicitly and intentionally do.
- immibis 2y ago
  The definition of capitalism is a system in which all sorts of things that are not property are artificially made into property and given artificial property rights which can be traded.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    That is the definition of capitalism people use when they want to apply the term capitalism to something that sucks. Allowing people to own physical items as business inventory or production equipment and compete with each other for the customer's dollar is entirely possible without the existence of copyright or patents. You would then be relying on some combination of open source, charitable contributions and patronage, industry joint ventures, personal itch scratching, etc. to create writings and inventions, but books and the wheel were created before patents and copyrights were.
    - fc417fc802 2y ago
      > You would then be relying on ... More likely trade secrets, NDAs, non-competes, and increasingly invasive DRM. In addition to the direct financial incentive, part of the logic behind IP law is to foster a more open market because that should be to the benefit of society at large in multiple ways. Patents, for example, ensure that at least some minimal description of the process gets published for others to take inspiration from.
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        > More likely trade secrets, NDAs, non-competes, and increasingly invasive DRM. These are all also creatures of the law. If there was no copyright there would be no Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In many cases they can't work, e.g. because of the analog hole or because the mechanism of operation is observable to anyone who buys the product. The incentives to uncover those things are also much stronger in modern day because of the connectedness of the world. If there were two wheelwrights in your town and one of them had a secret process, no one but the other would have any use for it and if they found out they wouldn't even have any else to tell it to. If someone had a secret video encoding strategy today, some hobbyists would reverse engineer it and post it on the internet. > Patents, for example, ensure that at least some minimal description of the process gets published for others to take inspiration from. Have you read a modern patent? They're inscrutable, and to the fullest extent allowable attempt to claim the overall concept of doing something rather than describing a specific implementation.
        fc417fc802 2y ago
        > In many cases they can't work, e.g. because of the analog hole Careful not to confuse illegal with unable. > [can't work because] the mechanism of operation is observable to anyone who buys the product. That was my point about increasingly invasive DRM. Without IP law, the only way for large swaths of industry to sustain themselves would be to deal exclusively on extensively secured platforms. Imagine a scenario where all paid services (software, streaming, and quite literally everything else) was only available on hardware attested devices rooted with only one or a few players. In the hypothetical scenario where it is explicitly legal to copy any binary that you gain possession of (ie copyright doesn't exist) I think that's what we would see. > If someone had a secret video encoding strategy today, some hobbyists would reverse engineer it and post it on the internet. Which is why patents exist. When companies decide how much to invest in what this is taken into account. Notably due to the lack of popularity (and thus lack of adoption) of patent encumbered video and audio standards, anyone trying to make a direct profit effectively dropped out years ago. At this point it's driven by behemoths that realize significant downstream cost savings. > Have you read a modern patent? They're inscrutable Yes, I'm aware. Consider how much worse things could be though. No hint, every employee who worked on it under both NDA and non-compete. Imagine how much more difficult the labor market would be to navigate if the government didn't intervene to prevent overbearing terms in such a scenario. Consider what all of this would do to market efficiency. My point was never to disagree with your broad strokes (that the free market is perfectly capable of functioning in the absence of IP law). Rather it was to point out that despite all the downsides, IP law does clearly offer some collective benefits by significantly reducing incentives that would otherwise drive greedy individuals to act against common interests.

by hnbad 2y ago

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

Copyright isn't a property right. Property rights are rivalrous. If you own a sandwich and a thousand other people want to eat your sandwich, only one person can, so property rights exist to define who gets to choose who gets to eat the sandwich. Writings and discoveries are non-rivalrous. To quote the first head of the US Patent Office: > He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. The term "intellectual property" is an attempt to conflate these things, to justify net-destructive money grabs like retroactive copyright term extensions, because traditional property rights don't expire but copyrights explicitly and intentionally do.

immibis 2y ago
The definition of capitalism is a system in which all sorts of things that are not property are artificially made into property and given artificial property rights which can be traded.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  That is the definition of capitalism people use when they want to apply the term capitalism to something that sucks. Allowing people to own physical items as business inventory or production equipment and compete with each other for the customer's dollar is entirely possible without the existence of copyright or patents. You would then be relying on some combination of open source, charitable contributions and patronage, industry joint ventures, personal itch scratching, etc. to create writings and inventions, but books and the wheel were created before patents and copyrights were.
  - fc417fc802 2y ago
    > You would then be relying on ... More likely trade secrets, NDAs, non-competes, and increasingly invasive DRM. In addition to the direct financial incentive, part of the logic behind IP law is to foster a more open market because that should be to the benefit of society at large in multiple ways. Patents, for example, ensure that at least some minimal description of the process gets published for others to take inspiration from.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      > More likely trade secrets, NDAs, non-competes, and increasingly invasive DRM. These are all also creatures of the law. If there was no copyright there would be no Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In many cases they can't work, e.g. because of the analog hole or because the mechanism of operation is observable to anyone who buys the product. The incentives to uncover those things are also much stronger in modern day because of the connectedness of the world. If there were two wheelwrights in your town and one of them had a secret process, no one but the other would have any use for it and if they found out they wouldn't even have any else to tell it to. If someone had a secret video encoding strategy today, some hobbyists would reverse engineer it and post it on the internet. > Patents, for example, ensure that at least some minimal description of the process gets published for others to take inspiration from. Have you read a modern patent? They're inscrutable, and to the fullest extent allowable attempt to claim the overall concept of doing something rather than describing a specific implementation.
      - fc417fc802 2y ago
        > In many cases they can't work, e.g. because of the analog hole Careful not to confuse illegal with unable. > [can't work because] the mechanism of operation is observable to anyone who buys the product. That was my point about increasingly invasive DRM. Without IP law, the only way for large swaths of industry to sustain themselves would be to deal exclusively on extensively secured platforms. Imagine a scenario where all paid services (software, streaming, and quite literally everything else) was only available on hardware attested devices rooted with only one or a few players. In the hypothetical scenario where it is explicitly legal to copy any binary that you gain possession of (ie copyright doesn't exist) I think that's what we would see. > If someone had a secret video encoding strategy today, some hobbyists would reverse engineer it and post it on the internet. Which is why patents exist. When companies decide how much to invest in what this is taken into account. Notably due to the lack of popularity (and thus lack of adoption) of patent encumbered video and audio standards, anyone trying to make a direct profit effectively dropped out years ago. At this point it's driven by behemoths that realize significant downstream cost savings. > Have you read a modern patent? They're inscrutable Yes, I'm aware. Consider how much worse things could be though. No hint, every employee who worked on it under both NDA and non-compete. Imagine how much more difficult the labor market would be to navigate if the government didn't intervene to prevent overbearing terms in such a scenario. Consider what all of this would do to market efficiency. My point was never to disagree with your broad strokes (that the free market is perfectly capable of functioning in the absence of IP law). Rather it was to point out that despite all the downsides, IP law does clearly offer some collective benefits by significantly reducing incentives that would otherwise drive greedy individuals to act against common interests.