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> The principles behind patents and copyright law make sense in this regard. I personally disagree strongly with IP in the first place. Of course, this leads

by zanny 13y ago

> The principles behind patents and copyright law make sense in this regard. I personally disagree strongly with IP in the first place. Of course, this leads to a divisive opposition against the current regime between those who still want IP and those who don't, but it is something I feel strongly enough about I am not willing to concede on. Things are awful right now, and having "better" IP would reduce the likelihood of an open information society because people would be even more complicit if the laws weren't so laughably bad right now.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago
It is anecdotal but I think of the invention of forceps - incredibly useful for midwifery but kept secret for fear of losing money. I think that Diffie et al did actually invent something in mathematics. They were able to publish in an environment where their claim to invention would be respected and they could reasonably expect to profit from it (in career terms). This is the nice, fluffy level where everyone publishes for the common good. I am all for that. I just don't think that works for a world where the majority of value is exepcted to arise from not physical labour but the application of intelligence (to physical labour) As a simple example - I build a concrete "squirting" robot that like a dot matrix puts dabs of concrete down on the ground, and with some darn clever software it can build a house or a office block. I think I should have to choice whether to release that code as free, or if I make all building companies pay me royalties. How we enforce that I do not know, but I do know that I would rather live in a world that has the problem of working out how to share out the value created by robots that build everything, than potentially strangle it in its crib.
- dreamdu5t 13y ago
  I'd rather live in a world where you didn't invent your robot then one where you have sole discretion over who gets to build anything in its likeness. IP isn't about whether you own the robot you built, it's about whether you own similar robots other people built.
  - twoodfin 13y ago
    Then you'd rather live in a world where inventors and their corresponding corporations can't actually sell anything, lest advantageous innards be studied and duplicated. Instead, they have to hire armies of lawyers to issue non-disclosure agreements to all their customers, who are greatly constrained in their use of new inventions because of the need for secrecy. It's all the same to the lawyers.
    - zanny 13y ago
      Except it isn't economically feasible to have a lawyer army and to try to keep millions of NDAs under wrap. But you come at it from the perspective that you just clonk down our culture and psyche around information into a world without IP and everything goes to shit. In reality, businesses evolve and adapt. Rather than consider r&d a capital investment in future revenue, your r&d budget is a public service - something you would want either cultural pressure to coerce out of businesses (I'm also a libertarian, and IP is just raw governmental power) but you could also argue from the socialist perspective the idea of using violent coercion of the state to transfer wealth into r&d. Either way, you are not researching to create profit. And I would argue you don't need to anymore. The things people want are things people will pay money to see developed. Not pay for in the end product, but pay the researchers up front. Instead of sitting back and hoping a cure for Parkinsons gets funded by a medical megacorp looking to profit off the IP, you throw money at Parkinsons thinktanks, and can appraise them on an individual basis for their merits, and put money where your mouth is for the things you care about. And then the rest can be voluntary. For the most part today many of our modern revolutions are voluntary - everything from standardized Internet protocols to tcp/ip were all developed not as for profit ideas but as standards to elevate humanity, and we reaped huge benefits from them. Because all that money spent today on R&D, and today on the patent lawsuits and lawyers, and today on policing every corner of society to ban thoughts and numbers, could be spent funding the research you want. Because it is a value proposition in whatever regime you have, but I am of the opinion that those who value research into certain fields would throw money at it regardless of profit motive because they want the end product, not the potential capital gain. I'd even argue that is a more effective way to develop innovation, because if your goal is the invention and not the profit afterwards, you have much greater clarity of vision to meet your goals.

by zanny 13y ago

lifeisstillgood 13y ago

It is anecdotal but I think of the invention of forceps - incredibly useful for midwifery but kept secret for fear of losing money. I think that Diffie et al did actually invent something in mathematics. They were able to publish in an environment where their claim to invention would be respected and they could reasonably expect to profit from it (in career terms). This is the nice, fluffy level where everyone publishes for the common good. I am all for that. I just don't think that works for a world where the majority of value is exepcted to arise from not physical labour but the application of intelligence (to physical labour) As a simple example - I build a concrete "squirting" robot that like a dot matrix puts dabs of concrete down on the ground, and with some darn clever software it can build a house or a office block. I think I should have to choice whether to release that code as free, or if I make all building companies pay me royalties. How we enforce that I do not know, but I do know that I would rather live in a world that has the problem of working out how to share out the value created by robots that build everything, than potentially strangle it in its crib.

dreamdu5t 13y ago
I'd rather live in a world where you didn't invent your robot then one where you have sole discretion over who gets to build anything in its likeness. IP isn't about whether you own the robot you built, it's about whether you own similar robots other people built.
- twoodfin 13y ago
  Then you'd rather live in a world where inventors and their corresponding corporations can't actually sell anything, lest advantageous innards be studied and duplicated. Instead, they have to hire armies of lawyers to issue non-disclosure agreements to all their customers, who are greatly constrained in their use of new inventions because of the need for secrecy. It's all the same to the lawyers.
  - zanny 13y ago
    Except it isn't economically feasible to have a lawyer army and to try to keep millions of NDAs under wrap. But you come at it from the perspective that you just clonk down our culture and psyche around information into a world without IP and everything goes to shit. In reality, businesses evolve and adapt. Rather than consider r&d a capital investment in future revenue, your r&d budget is a public service - something you would want either cultural pressure to coerce out of businesses (I'm also a libertarian, and IP is just raw governmental power) but you could also argue from the socialist perspective the idea of using violent coercion of the state to transfer wealth into r&d. Either way, you are not researching to create profit. And I would argue you don't need to anymore. The things people want are things people will pay money to see developed. Not pay for in the end product, but pay the researchers up front. Instead of sitting back and hoping a cure for Parkinsons gets funded by a medical megacorp looking to profit off the IP, you throw money at Parkinsons thinktanks, and can appraise them on an individual basis for their merits, and put money where your mouth is for the things you care about. And then the rest can be voluntary. For the most part today many of our modern revolutions are voluntary - everything from standardized Internet protocols to tcp/ip were all developed not as for profit ideas but as standards to elevate humanity, and we reaped huge benefits from them. Because all that money spent today on R&D, and today on the patent lawsuits and lawyers, and today on policing every corner of society to ban thoughts and numbers, could be spent funding the research you want. Because it is a value proposition in whatever regime you have, but I am of the opinion that those who value research into certain fields would throw money at it regardless of profit motive because they want the end product, not the potential capital gain. I'd even argue that is a more effective way to develop innovation, because if your goal is the invention and not the profit afterwards, you have much greater clarity of vision to meet your goals.