5 ms·

>"For myself, the big fraud is getting public to believe that Intellectual Property was a moral principle and not just effective BS to justify corporate rent se

by trinsic2 10mo ago

>"For myself, the big fraud is getting public to believe that Intellectual Property was a moral principle and not just effective BS to justify corporate rent seeking." If anything, I'm glad people are finally starting to wake up to this fact.

herval 10mo ago
confusing any law with "moral principles" is a pretty naive view of the world. Many countries base some of their laws on well accepted moral rules to make it easier to apply them (it's easier to enforce something the majority of the people want enforced), but the vast majority of the laws were always made (and maintained) to benefit the ruling class
- trinsic2 10mo ago
  Yeah I see where you are going with this, but I think he was trying to make a point about being convinced by decree. It tended to get people to think that it should be moral. Also I disagree with the context of what the purpose is for law. I don't think its just about making it easier to apply laws because people see things in moralistic ways. Pure Law, which came from the existence of Common Law (which relates to whats common to people) existed within the frame work of whats moral. There are certain things, which all humans know at some level are morally right or wrong regardless of what modernity teaches us. Common laws were built up around that framework. There is administrative law, which is different and what I think you are talking about. IMHO, there is something moral that can be learned from trying to convince people that IP is moral, when it is, in fact, just a way to administrate people into thinking that IP is valid.
- RossBencina 10mo ago
  I don't think this is about being confused out of naivety. In some parts of the western world the marketing department has invested heavily in establishing moral equivalence between IP violation and theft.
fc417fc802 10mo ago
Neither take is correct. When correctly applied it can be an effective tool to encourage certain sorts of intellectual endeavors by making them monetarily favorable. When incorrectly applied it leads to dysfunction as is the case for most regulatory regimes. Any tool can be used by a wrongdoer for evil. Corporations will manipulate the regulator in order to rent seek using whatever happens to be available to them. That doesn't make the tools themselves evil.
- spwa4 10mo ago
  > When incorrectly applied it leads to dysfunction as is the case for most regulatory regimes. The second it became cheaper to not apply it, every state under the sun chose not to apply it. Whether we're talking about Chinese imports that absolutely do not respect copyright, trademark, even quality, health and warranty laws ... and nothing was done. Then, large scale use of copyrighted by Search provider (even pre-Google), Social Networks, and others nothing was done. Then, large scale use for making AI products (because these AI just wouldn't work without free access to all copyrighted info). And, of course, they don't put in any effort. Checking imports for fakes? Nope. Even checking imports for improperly produced medications is extremely rarely done. If you find your copyright violated on a large scale on Amazon, your recourse effectively is to first go beg Amazon for information on sellers (which they have a strong incentive not to provide) and then go run international court cases, which is very hard, very expensive, and in many cases (China, India) totally unfair. If you get poisoned from a pill your national insurance bought from India, they consider themselves not responsible. Of course, this makes "competition" effectively a tax-dodging competition over time. And the fault for that lies entirely with the choice of your own government. Your statement about incorrect application only makes sense if "regulatory regimes" aren't really just people. Go visit your government offices, you'll find they're full of people. People who purposefully made a choice in this matter. A choice to enforce laws against small entities they can easily bully, and to not do it on a larger scale. To add insult to injury, you will find these choices were almost never made by parliaments, but in international treaties and larger organizations like the WTO, or executive powers of large trade blocks.
  - fc417fc802 10mo ago
strogonoff 10mo ago
The concept of intellectual property on its own (independently of its legal implementation details) is at most as evil as property ownership, and probably less so as unlike the latter it promotes innovation and creativity. Despite the apparent etymological contrast, “copyright” is neither antithetical to nor exclusive with “copyleft”: IP ownership, a degree of control over own creation’s future, is a precondition for copyleft (and the OSS ecosystem it birthed) to exist in the first place.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 10mo ago
  >The concept of intellectual property on its own (independently of its legal implementation details) is at most as evil as property ownership, and probably less so as unlike the latter it promotes innovation and creativity. This is a strange inversion. Property ownership is morally just in that the piece of land my home is can only be exclusive, not to mention necessary to a decent life. Meanwhile, intellectual property is a contrivance that was invented to promote creativity, but is subverted in ways that we're only now beginning to discover. Abolish copyright.
  - johnnyanmac 10mo ago
    >the piece of land my home is can only be exclusive, not to mention necessary to a decent life That mentality is exactly why you can argue property ownership being more evil. Landlords "own property" and see the reputation of that these past few decades. Allowing private ownership of limited human necessities like land leads to greed that cost people lives. That's why heavy regulation is needed. Meanwhile, it's at worst annoying and stifling when Disney owns a cartoon mouse fotlr 100 years.
    - strogonoff 10mo ago
      Feels like we think along similar lines on this issue.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 10mo ago
      >Allowing private ownership of limited human necessities like land leads to greed that cost people lives. You're not "allowing" it unless you've already decided that you own it and can dispose of it (or not) as you see it. And this is why you'll always be the enemy of all decent folk. "Real communism's never been tried!!!!" >Meanwhile, it's at worst annoying and stifling when Disney owns a cartoon mouse fotlr 100 years. It's actually destructive of culture in ways that are difficult to overstate. Disney nor any other "copyright owner" can't be trusted to preserve culture and works, they're the ones that threw the old film reels into the river and let them burn up in archive fires. No thanks. It's amazing how wrong you are on every single point.
bgwalter 10mo ago
Most people here would be interested in Rob Pike's opinion. What you quote is from someone commenting on Rob's post. The way that Rob's opinion here is deflected, first by focusing on the fact that he got a spam mail and then this misleading quote ("myself" does not refer to Rob) is very sad. The spam mail just triggered Rob's opinion (the one that normal people are interested in).
- bigyabai 10mo ago
  Both are intellectually gratifying, to me. I think the only mistake they made was leaving the attribution ambiguous.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
- HaZeust 10mo ago
  >"Rob's opinion (the one that normal people are interested in)." I think you have an overinflated notion of what "normal people" care about
  - oh_my_goodness 10mo ago
    Pike's name is what people are clicking on here. That's being abused to sell this random comment about IP.
    - trinsic2 10mo ago
      Dont try to tell us what we are choosing to focus on. Everything in the message from Pike and the comments below his post are relevant. There was no assumption in my mind that this was all about Pike.
      - oh_my_goodness 10mo ago
        Please don't reinterpret my comment. I didn't say anything about what you're focusing on. I made the simple and clear point that clicking on Pike's name leads to an unattributed quotation that (it turns out) isn't from Pike.
oh_my_goodness 10mo ago
Quotation not from Pike.
- oh_my_goodness 10mo ago
  To be clear: note that that the quotation that has taken over the focus is not from Rob Pike at all. Not Pike.
tqwhite 10mo ago
I am with you 100%. The phrase “intellectual property” is an oxymoron. Intellect and Property are opposite things. Worse, the actual truth of intellectual property laws is not, “I’m an artist who got rich”. It is, “I ended up selling my property to a corporation and got screwed.” The web is for public use. If you don’t want the public, which includes AI, to use it, don’t put it there.
- calf 10mo ago
  IP is a loaded and prejudiced term. That said, copyright could allow for an author to place a work in public but not allow the audience to copy it.
nhinck3 10mo ago
Waking up to the fact that the largest corporations in the world are stealing off everyday people to sell a subscription to their theft driven service? The absolute delusion.
razodactyl 10mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking TIL

herval 10mo ago

confusing any law with "moral principles" is a pretty naive view of the world. Many countries base some of their laws on well accepted moral rules to make it easier to apply them (it's easier to enforce something the majority of the people want enforced), but the vast majority of the laws were always made (and maintained) to benefit the ruling class

trinsic2 10mo ago
Yeah I see where you are going with this, but I think he was trying to make a point about being convinced by decree. It tended to get people to think that it should be moral. Also I disagree with the context of what the purpose is for law. I don't think its just about making it easier to apply laws because people see things in moralistic ways. Pure Law, which came from the existence of Common Law (which relates to whats common to people) existed within the frame work of whats moral. There are certain things, which all humans know at some level are morally right or wrong regardless of what modernity teaches us. Common laws were built up around that framework. There is administrative law, which is different and what I think you are talking about. IMHO, there is something moral that can be learned from trying to convince people that IP is moral, when it is, in fact, just a way to administrate people into thinking that IP is valid.
RossBencina 10mo ago
I don't think this is about being confused out of naivety. In some parts of the western world the marketing department has invested heavily in establishing moral equivalence between IP violation and theft.

fc417fc802 10mo ago

Neither take is correct. When correctly applied it can be an effective tool to encourage certain sorts of intellectual endeavors by making them monetarily favorable. When incorrectly applied it leads to dysfunction as is the case for most regulatory regimes. Any tool can be used by a wrongdoer for evil. Corporations will manipulate the regulator in order to rent seek using whatever happens to be available to them. That doesn't make the tools themselves evil.

spwa4 10mo ago
> When incorrectly applied it leads to dysfunction as is the case for most regulatory regimes. The second it became cheaper to not apply it, every state under the sun chose not to apply it. Whether we're talking about Chinese imports that absolutely do not respect copyright, trademark, even quality, health and warranty laws ... and nothing was done. Then, large scale use of copyrighted by Search provider (even pre-Google), Social Networks, and others nothing was done. Then, large scale use for making AI products (because these AI just wouldn't work without free access to all copyrighted info). And, of course, they don't put in any effort. Checking imports for fakes? Nope. Even checking imports for improperly produced medications is extremely rarely done. If you find your copyright violated on a large scale on Amazon, your recourse effectively is to first go beg Amazon for information on sellers (which they have a strong incentive not to provide) and then go run international court cases, which is very hard, very expensive, and in many cases (China, India) totally unfair. If you get poisoned from a pill your national insurance bought from India, they consider themselves not responsible. Of course, this makes "competition" effectively a tax-dodging competition over time. And the fault for that lies entirely with the choice of your own government. Your statement about incorrect application only makes sense if "regulatory regimes" aren't really just people. Go visit your government offices, you'll find they're full of people. People who purposefully made a choice in this matter. A choice to enforce laws against small entities they can easily bully, and to not do it on a larger scale. To add insult to injury, you will find these choices were almost never made by parliaments, but in international treaties and larger organizations like the WTO, or executive powers of large trade blocks.
- fc417fc802 10mo ago

strogonoff 10mo ago

The concept of intellectual property on its own (independently of its legal implementation details) is at most as evil as property ownership, and probably less so as unlike the latter it promotes innovation and creativity. Despite the apparent etymological contrast, “copyright” is neither antithetical to nor exclusive with “copyleft”: IP ownership, a degree of control over own creation’s future, is a precondition for copyleft (and the OSS ecosystem it birthed) to exist in the first place.

NoMoreNicksLeft 10mo ago
>The concept of intellectual property on its own (independently of its legal implementation details) is at most as evil as property ownership, and probably less so as unlike the latter it promotes innovation and creativity. This is a strange inversion. Property ownership is morally just in that the piece of land my home is can only be exclusive, not to mention necessary to a decent life. Meanwhile, intellectual property is a contrivance that was invented to promote creativity, but is subverted in ways that we're only now beginning to discover. Abolish copyright.
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago
  >the piece of land my home is can only be exclusive, not to mention necessary to a decent life That mentality is exactly why you can argue property ownership being more evil. Landlords "own property" and see the reputation of that these past few decades. Allowing private ownership of limited human necessities like land leads to greed that cost people lives. That's why heavy regulation is needed. Meanwhile, it's at worst annoying and stifling when Disney owns a cartoon mouse fotlr 100 years.
  - strogonoff 10mo ago
    Feels like we think along similar lines on this issue.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 10mo ago
    >Allowing private ownership of limited human necessities like land leads to greed that cost people lives. You're not "allowing" it unless you've already decided that you own it and can dispose of it (or not) as you see it. And this is why you'll always be the enemy of all decent folk. "Real communism's never been tried!!!!" >Meanwhile, it's at worst annoying and stifling when Disney owns a cartoon mouse fotlr 100 years. It's actually destructive of culture in ways that are difficult to overstate. Disney nor any other "copyright owner" can't be trusted to preserve culture and works, they're the ones that threw the old film reels into the river and let them burn up in archive fires. No thanks. It's amazing how wrong you are on every single point.

bgwalter 10mo ago

Most people here would be interested in Rob Pike's opinion. What you quote is from someone commenting on Rob's post. The way that Rob's opinion here is deflected, first by focusing on the fact that he got a spam mail and then this misleading quote ("myself" does not refer to Rob) is very sad. The spam mail just triggered Rob's opinion (the one that normal people are interested in).

bigyabai 10mo ago
Both are intellectually gratifying, to me. I think the only mistake they made was leaving the attribution ambiguous.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
HaZeust 10mo ago
>"Rob's opinion (the one that normal people are interested in)." I think you have an overinflated notion of what "normal people" care about
- oh_my_goodness 10mo ago
  Pike's name is what people are clicking on here. That's being abused to sell this random comment about IP.
  - trinsic2 10mo ago
    Dont try to tell us what we are choosing to focus on. Everything in the message from Pike and the comments below his post are relevant. There was no assumption in my mind that this was all about Pike.
    - oh_my_goodness 10mo ago
      Please don't reinterpret my comment. I didn't say anything about what you're focusing on. I made the simple and clear point that clicking on Pike's name leads to an unattributed quotation that (it turns out) isn't from Pike.

oh_my_goodness 10mo ago

Quotation not from Pike.

oh_my_goodness 10mo ago
To be clear: note that that the quotation that has taken over the focus is not from Rob Pike at all. Not Pike.

tqwhite 10mo ago

I am with you 100%. The phrase “intellectual property” is an oxymoron. Intellect and Property are opposite things. Worse, the actual truth of intellectual property laws is not, “I’m an artist who got rich”. It is, “I ended up selling my property to a corporation and got screwed.” The web is for public use. If you don’t want the public, which includes AI, to use it, don’t put it there.

calf 10mo ago
IP is a loaded and prejudiced term. That said, copyright could allow for an author to place a work in public but not allow the audience to copy it.

nhinck3 10mo ago

Waking up to the fact that the largest corporations in the world are stealing off everyday people to sell a subscription to their theft driven service? The absolute delusion.

razodactyl 10mo ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking TIL