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So you're saying: "It's very complicated, you won't understand my arguments." It is simple, IP laws lead to slower development of science and industry and accu

So you're saying: "It's very complicated, you won't understand my arguments." It is simple, IP laws lead to slower development of science and industry and accumulation of huge amounts of money and power in the hands of a few. Classical example is 19th and early 20th century British Empire - it's IP laws are what to a big degree allowed US and Germany to catch up and surpass it.

danso 14y ago
I don't think America surpassing Britain in any category was solely due to copyright laws. I would bet it was more of an issue of the UK absorbing a huge brunt of the wartime activity during that period. To use two Asian countries: it's my understanding that Japan has had a lot of technological success while at the same time employing copy-protection practices (from what I remember in my Nintendo days). China is not at Japan's development stage yet but do you believe China, barring a change in how they enforce copyright, will be as much of an innovations leader as Japan was in its heyday?
- TeeDub 14y ago
  >"I don't think America surpassing Britain in any category was solely due to copyright laws." This may be incorrect, at least for one category (literature). There's actually some really interesting lit that argues that lax/nonexistent copyright laws of the revolutionary period are the reason that the publishing industry ever took off in America. And these same laws, it could be argued, are how American literature got its start. (Sorry, this is skeevy, but I can't remember the title of the book that articulates this argument for the life of me... Will post it if it comes to me.) As to your second argument: Are there other aspects of Japanese society that could influence their innovation that go beyond intellectual property? I'm not going to deny that IP protections could play a role in innovation, but I could certainly imagine two countries with identical IP regimes having RADICALLY different levels of innovation. (Education, culture, etc could all create positive impacts on innovation... and these effects may even outweigh any effect produced by an IP regime.) Are there any metrics for innovation as a whole? This would be an interesting thing to look into...
  - hdevalence 14y ago
    I don't know if this is the book you're thinking of, but "Against Intellectual Monopoly" by Michele Boldrin and David Levine has such arguments. It's a very interesting book -- I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the subject, whatever their position.
    - westicle 14y ago
      So very refreshing to see a response to a (self-acknowledged) lack of citation which is helpful and advances the discussion rather than snarky or negative. I very much appreciate the high quality of discourse hn makes possible (despite the fact that the actual quality varies wildly).
  - hdevalence 14y ago
    I don't know if this is the book you're thinking of, but "Against Intellectual Monopoly" by Michele Boldrin and David Levine has such arguments. It's a very interesting book -- I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the subject, whatever their position.
TeeDub 14y ago
>So you're saying: "It's very complicated, you won't understand my arguments." No, that's not at all what he's saying. He's saying that intellectual property is actually an immensely broad and complicated issue. (Rather: That's what I interpreted him to be saying; I could be wrong here.) I don't think you can really make a statement like "IP laws lead to slower development of science and industry..." because "IP laws" are such a broad category of laws. Do you mean patents? What kind of patents? (Does a 5 year patent on medicines, something proposed by the Pirate Party, count as an IP law that reduces development? Why? How does it differ from other patents that are longer / renewable?) Can I make a contract to stop someone from disclosing an idea of mine? Is that an IP law? (Probably) Is it aggregating money into the hands of the few? (More dubious claim there...) Don't get me wrong, I tend to agree that there should be limits on the sorts of monopolies that IP laws tend to foster, and I think that the current IP regimes that are dominant are typically very damaging. But I also think there could be certain IP controls that are acceptable and positive. (Allowing for IP regimes that are basically "trade secrets only" seems a bit inadequate to me, especially since patents offer valuable protections to certain kinds of innovations.) This is a view that your wildly over-broad/under-specified interpretation of IP would not accommodate.
- danso 14y ago
  You interpreted me right. One dimension that needs to be considered is that, as opposed to Newton's day, the average human has substantially less chance of dying from a consumer product. The pharma industry is a very good example of this...the costs of drugs and the tricks pharma companies use to extend patents is rightly criticized...on the other hand, the research and regulatory process is massively lengthy and costly, and one that no one would pursue if another company could swoop in and profit on billions of R&D. There's also something else...rate of advancement is likely going to seem slower than it was in the past few centuries, because of a natural diminishing rate of return. To paraphrase -- I think, Stephen Colbert -- it's easy to make scientific discoveries when not burying diseased corpses next to your water supply is considered a health breakthrough.
  - TeeDub 14y ago
    >"There's also something else...rate of advancement is likely going to seem slower than it was in the past few centuries, because of a natural diminishing rate of return. To paraphrase -- I think, Stephen Colbert -- it's easy to make scientific discoveries when not burying diseased corpses next to your water supply is considered a health breakthrough." This is a particularly superb point! I really like this argument.
pbhjpbhj 14y ago
You can't copyright a physical law, you can't even patent it. So in that respect Newton's work wouldn't be limited in it's use. Personally I think he'd release his treatise under CC-BY (which requires copyright law to work). FWIW patents are about an exchange of knowledge for a time-limited monopoly on the use of that knowledge. Patents allow the free propagation of the ideas behind patentable inventions and provide means to incentivise inventors and to reward beneficial inventions. They also, by exclusions, all the development, experiment and investigation of others in to the content of patent disclosures before the details therein would normally be disclosed. The alternative to patents ("open [letters]") is industrial secrets. If you can show me how making all current patent disclosures in to industrial secrets promotes the propagation of technological ideas I'd be much obliged.
- Strshps1MoreTim 14y ago
  Yeah, that's an excellent selling/lobbying tactic - limit the choice to as few alternatives as possible, ideally two. E.g. the alternative to smoking is drug abuse, so smoking is not simple... How do you see an industrial secret being an alternative for a video game (the original post)?? Current patents are not about exchange of knowledge (I'd ask what have you been smoking, but it's against the HN guidelines, in your view the patent trolls must be the bringers of fire) - Apple patents on rectangular form, Monsanto and Co patents on genes, the mind blowing obvious software patents.
  - danso 14y ago
    Yeah I don't think anyone here is going to agree with you that computing and life has been vastly curtailed in creativity after the dominance of Apple and its copyright-imposing policies.
    - Strshps1MoreTim 14y ago
      Talking about simplification ...
  - pbhjpbhj 14y ago
    >the mind blowing obvious software patents // Poor implementation in your jurisdiction doesn't make the idea of patents wrong.
potatolicious 14y ago
> "So you're saying: "It's very complicated, you won't understand my arguments."" I don't read that from his comment at all. What he said was that the issue is complex and demands more than a pithy one=liner. I don't see any reason to invent a straw man, particularly an ad hominem one at that (by painting danso as some kind of arrogant elitist). Is there another reason why you're being condescending?

danso 14y ago

I don't think America surpassing Britain in any category was solely due to copyright laws. I would bet it was more of an issue of the UK absorbing a huge brunt of the wartime activity during that period. To use two Asian countries: it's my understanding that Japan has had a lot of technological success while at the same time employing copy-protection practices (from what I remember in my Nintendo days). China is not at Japan's development stage yet but do you believe China, barring a change in how they enforce copyright, will be as much of an innovations leader as Japan was in its heyday?

TeeDub 14y ago
>"I don't think America surpassing Britain in any category was solely due to copyright laws." This may be incorrect, at least for one category (literature). There's actually some really interesting lit that argues that lax/nonexistent copyright laws of the revolutionary period are the reason that the publishing industry ever took off in America. And these same laws, it could be argued, are how American literature got its start. (Sorry, this is skeevy, but I can't remember the title of the book that articulates this argument for the life of me... Will post it if it comes to me.) As to your second argument: Are there other aspects of Japanese society that could influence their innovation that go beyond intellectual property? I'm not going to deny that IP protections could play a role in innovation, but I could certainly imagine two countries with identical IP regimes having RADICALLY different levels of innovation. (Education, culture, etc could all create positive impacts on innovation... and these effects may even outweigh any effect produced by an IP regime.) Are there any metrics for innovation as a whole? This would be an interesting thing to look into...
- hdevalence 14y ago
  I don't know if this is the book you're thinking of, but "Against Intellectual Monopoly" by Michele Boldrin and David Levine has such arguments. It's a very interesting book -- I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the subject, whatever their position.
  - westicle 14y ago
    So very refreshing to see a response to a (self-acknowledged) lack of citation which is helpful and advances the discussion rather than snarky or negative. I very much appreciate the high quality of discourse hn makes possible (despite the fact that the actual quality varies wildly).
- hdevalence 14y ago
  I don't know if this is the book you're thinking of, but "Against Intellectual Monopoly" by Michele Boldrin and David Levine has such arguments. It's a very interesting book -- I'd recommend it to anyone interested in the subject, whatever their position.

TeeDub 14y ago

>So you're saying: "It's very complicated, you won't understand my arguments." No, that's not at all what he's saying. He's saying that intellectual property is actually an immensely broad and complicated issue. (Rather: That's what I interpreted him to be saying; I could be wrong here.) I don't think you can really make a statement like "IP laws lead to slower development of science and industry..." because "IP laws" are such a broad category of laws. Do you mean patents? What kind of patents? (Does a 5 year patent on medicines, something proposed by the Pirate Party, count as an IP law that reduces development? Why? How does it differ from other patents that are longer / renewable?) Can I make a contract to stop someone from disclosing an idea of mine? Is that an IP law? (Probably) Is it aggregating money into the hands of the few? (More dubious claim there...) Don't get me wrong, I tend to agree that there should be limits on the sorts of monopolies that IP laws tend to foster, and I think that the current IP regimes that are dominant are typically very damaging. But I also think there could be certain IP controls that are acceptable and positive. (Allowing for IP regimes that are basically "trade secrets only" seems a bit inadequate to me, especially since patents offer valuable protections to certain kinds of innovations.) This is a view that your wildly over-broad/under-specified interpretation of IP would not accommodate.

danso 14y ago
You interpreted me right. One dimension that needs to be considered is that, as opposed to Newton's day, the average human has substantially less chance of dying from a consumer product. The pharma industry is a very good example of this...the costs of drugs and the tricks pharma companies use to extend patents is rightly criticized...on the other hand, the research and regulatory process is massively lengthy and costly, and one that no one would pursue if another company could swoop in and profit on billions of R&D. There's also something else...rate of advancement is likely going to seem slower than it was in the past few centuries, because of a natural diminishing rate of return. To paraphrase -- I think, Stephen Colbert -- it's easy to make scientific discoveries when not burying diseased corpses next to your water supply is considered a health breakthrough.
- TeeDub 14y ago
  >"There's also something else...rate of advancement is likely going to seem slower than it was in the past few centuries, because of a natural diminishing rate of return. To paraphrase -- I think, Stephen Colbert -- it's easy to make scientific discoveries when not burying diseased corpses next to your water supply is considered a health breakthrough." This is a particularly superb point! I really like this argument.

pbhjpbhj 14y ago

You can't copyright a physical law, you can't even patent it. So in that respect Newton's work wouldn't be limited in it's use. Personally I think he'd release his treatise under CC-BY (which requires copyright law to work). FWIW patents are about an exchange of knowledge for a time-limited monopoly on the use of that knowledge. Patents allow the free propagation of the ideas behind patentable inventions and provide means to incentivise inventors and to reward beneficial inventions. They also, by exclusions, all the development, experiment and investigation of others in to the content of patent disclosures before the details therein would normally be disclosed. The alternative to patents ("open [letters]") is industrial secrets. If you can show me how making all current patent disclosures in to industrial secrets promotes the propagation of technological ideas I'd be much obliged.

Strshps1MoreTim 14y ago
Yeah, that's an excellent selling/lobbying tactic - limit the choice to as few alternatives as possible, ideally two. E.g. the alternative to smoking is drug abuse, so smoking is not simple... How do you see an industrial secret being an alternative for a video game (the original post)?? Current patents are not about exchange of knowledge (I'd ask what have you been smoking, but it's against the HN guidelines, in your view the patent trolls must be the bringers of fire) - Apple patents on rectangular form, Monsanto and Co patents on genes, the mind blowing obvious software patents.
- danso 14y ago
  Yeah I don't think anyone here is going to agree with you that computing and life has been vastly curtailed in creativity after the dominance of Apple and its copyright-imposing policies.
  - Strshps1MoreTim 14y ago
    Talking about simplification ...
- pbhjpbhj 14y ago
  >the mind blowing obvious software patents // Poor implementation in your jurisdiction doesn't make the idea of patents wrong.

potatolicious 14y ago

> "So you're saying: "It's very complicated, you won't understand my arguments."" I don't read that from his comment at all. What he said was that the issue is complex and demands more than a pithy one=liner. I don't see any reason to invent a straw man, particularly an ad hominem one at that (by painting danso as some kind of arrogant elitist). Is there another reason why you're being condescending?