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> When correctly applied it can be an effective tool to encourage certain sorts of intellectual endeavors by making them monetarily favorable This has been emp
by Bratmon 10mo ago
> When correctly applied it can be an effective tool to encourage certain sorts of intellectual endeavors by making them monetarily favorable
This has been empirically disproven. China experimented with having no enforced Intellectual Property laws, and the result was that they were able to do the same technological advancement it took the West 250 years to do and surpass them in four decades.
Intellectual Property law is literally a 6x slowdown for technology.
- fc417fc802 10mo agoChina was playing industrial catch up. They didn't have to (for example) reinvent semiconductors from first principles. They will surely support some form of IP law once they have been firmly established at the cutting edge for a while. I'm no fan of the current state of things but it's absurd to imply that the existence of IP law in some form isn't essential if you want corporations to continue much of their R&D as it currently exists. Without copyright in at least some limited form how do you expect authors to make a living? Will you have the state fund them directly? Do you propose going back to a patronage system in the hopes that a rich client just so happens to fund something that you also enjoy? Something else?
- tedk-42 10mo agoImagine our human ancestors claiming IP infringement when one guy copied fire making from another.
- phs318u 10mo agoMaybe this is just me, but the second I read your comment I envisioned a “caveman” sitcom.
- fuzzfactor 10mo agoWell during prehistoric times (1960's) The Flintstones had Zippo lighters that rubbed two tiny sticks together to light their Winston cigarettes. The tobacco brand of their major sponsor. Naturally that could never have been legitimate until the patent on the Zippo had expired ;)
- nmz 10mo agoIs an LLM human now?
- fc417fc802 10mo agoA perfect illustration of why IP should never be regarded as a moral right. It exists for the benefit of society as a whole. Thus the laws creating it need to be tuned with that as the explicit (and only) goal. Mickey Mouse law must not be permitted.
- snickerbockers 10mo ago>a patronage system in the hopes that a rich client just so happens to fund something that you also enjoy How is that any different from hoping that a corporate conglomerate happens to fund something i also enjoy?
- shimman 10mo agoIt's not, it's just lies they use to justify the existence of a capitalist system that is barely 50 years old. So obvious what a fucking farce this all is and it's time we start demanding better.
- imperfect_blue 10mo agoIf you are actually asking a serious question: while a patron is primarily motivated by whatever catches his interest, a corporate conglomerate funding the same investments is motivated by profit. They would have more of a motive to select the kind of investments that will succeed and pay for themselves, allowing for a more economically efficient allocation of resources. Of course, the kind of investments that might succeed and pay for themselves may not necessarily be the kind that is most beneficial to the public at large - but the same applies to the patron.
- fc417fc802 10mo agoAs you say, conglomerates being profit motivated tend to produce largely uninteresting slop. See the vast majority of the movie industry. Patrons will produce some very interesting and detailed work but it will not necessarily align with your tastes and there will probably not be all that much of it. European history makes this clear enough (imo). A system in which individual or very small groups of creators are able to produce work of their own choice that appeals to a small to moderately sized niche of their choosing seems like it should produce the best outcome from the perspective of the typical individual. Fiction books are a decent example of this. We get lots of at least decent quality work because a single author can feasibly produce something "on credit" and recoup the costs after the fact.
- Bratmon 10mo ago> China was playing industrial catch up. They didn't have to (for example) reinvent semiconductors from first principles. They will surely support some form of IP law once they have been firmly established at the cutting edge for a while. That argument was in vogue about 20 years ago, but it fell out of favor when China passed us on the most important technologies without slowing down. It is funny that some people are still carrying the torch for it after it's been so clearly disproven.
- aforwardslash 10mo agoCopying and innovating are two very different things; most of China' s innovation has been incremental, to be kind. To keep up, the machine still needs to copy. Just like Japan did for decades until it became an industrial behemoth, so give them 10 more years and soon enough the western world will be doing the copying
- beeflet 10mo agowell now that they're ahead we need to copy
- sokoloff 10mo agoI agree they’ve surpassed the west (or at least stopped solely playing catch up) in some areas. But surely you can see how your upthread math of “250 years in 40 years” has a mix of mostly catch-up and replication and a sliver of novel innovation at the extreme tail end of that 250 year span?
- roenxi 10mo agoI agree that the China experiment hasn't empirically disproven IP law for the reasons you go in it. And this thread has hit the usual problem that "IP laws" are very broad and cover everything from basic common sense around trademarks to the lunacy like the Amazon one-click patent. But at issue here is there are IP laws that slow progress it should sit with the proponents of those laws to demonstrate that they are effective. And I don't see how anyone could come up with evidence for that - it is nearly impossible to prove that purposefully and artificially retarding progress actually speeds progress up. There are a lot of other factors at play and one of them is probably a more important factor than IP law. Odds are that putting artificial obstacles in the way of making sensible commercial decisions just slows everything down for no gain. And kills the culture, it is sad the amount of cultural artefacts in the 1900s that have basically been strangled by IP laws. My family used to be part of a community choir before the copyright lawyers got to it.
- carlosjobim 10mo agoIf you steal 249 years of technological achievement from others, it's not that difficult.
- Bratmon 10mo agoThey sure didn't slow down after they passed us.
- aforwardslash 10mo agoWere those 249 years produced in a vacuum? Or did they stand on 1500 years of mathematics and trial-and- error? As a quick example, think of a high-end digital photographic camera; you can certainly highlight the major tech advancements that make it high end, but do you know how the screws were produced? Where the grease used on the gears cone from? How long did it take to get to the state-of-the-art optics? How can you even get composite materials to perform heavy-duty cycles? Those 249 years of tech were based on the previous 249 years of tech, and so on and so on. That is how it works. Nothing you have "today" comes from a vacuum.
- iwontberude 10mo agoNot just China but almost all of the world. We have parity in most countries right now. The whole point of the WTO was to do technology transfer and allow the US to double down on high margin, finance parts of business since the manufacturing game had the low fruit all picked and wasn’t valuable property anymore. The exception for the west would be to specialize on optics and silicon, two places China is still far behind.
- senordevnyc 10mo agoCalling your own highly creative spin on history "empirical" is many things, but persuasive isn't one of them.
- Bratmon 10mo agoWhich part do you think I'm lying about- that China experimented with having no enforced Intellectual Property laws or that they industrialized six times faster than the west? I can provide sources for either claim.
- bobsmooth 10mo agoChina can copy, can it create anything new?
- bdangubic 10mo agothey don’t have to
- suspended_state 10mo agoPapermaking, printing, gunpowder, compass, porcelain, paper money, abacus, iron plow, wheelbarrow.
- jesse__ 10mo agoMore recently, net-positive thorium-salt fusion reactors
- gnaritas99 10mo ago[dead]
- cjseal 10mo agoMolten salt reactors are fission reactors.
- jesse__ 10mo agoWhups, yes, my bad. Must have been tired when I wrote that.
- bobsmooth 10mo agoAnything in the last 100 years?
- TSiege 10mo agoI guess you haven't heard about their clean energy sector
- gamblor956 10mo agoChina has IP laws and enforces them against foreign companies but not domestic ones.
- Bratmon 10mo agoExactly! They know perfectly well that applying a 6x slowdown to their competitors but not themselves is a good way to pull ahead.
- rewgs 10mo ago> China experimented with having no enforced Intellectual Property laws, and the result was that they were able to do the same technological advancement it took the West 250 years to do and surpass them in four decades. Are you seriously ignoring the fact that China wasn't developing new technology, but rather utilizing already-existing technology? Of course it took 6x less time!