7 ms·

Abolish Intellectual Property. Period. IP's time (if there ever was one) is over. There is no benefit for real inventors and artists anymore, merely for mega c

Abolish Intellectual Property. Period. IP's time (if there ever was one) is over. There is no benefit for real inventors and artists anymore, merely for mega corporations to use the levers of government to maximize their profits at the expense of humanity and freedom. Nothing "intellectual" should be property. I'm not against corporations or even mega corporations. I think they'd do better for themselves (and their users, more importantly) if they didn't waste years and $billions battling each other and bullying startups and individuals over IP. Instead, they should just focus of making better things. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. 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. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. - Thomas Jefferson

Snail_Commando 13y ago
> Abolish Intellectual Property. Period. > IP's time (if there ever was one) is over. There is no benefit for real inventors and artists anymore, merely for mega corporations to use the levers of government to maximize their profits at the expense of humanity and freedom. Nothing "intellectual" should be property. > I'm not against corporations or even mega corporations. I think they'd do better for themselves (and their users, more importantly) if they didn't waste years and $billions battling each other and bullying startups and individuals over IP. Instead, they should just focus of making better things. > [Quotation] This sounds like a noble rallying cry but is ultimately misguided. How does this system reconcile with the incentive structures inherent in pharmaceutical research and drug design?
- harshreality 13y ago
  Pharma is a special case. Can we separate IP into pharma and -other- and deal with them separately? Pharma "development" might be done by academics who get bought out by big pharma after their discovery, or it might be done originally by big pharma. Should pharma IP be protected so they can inflate prices to pad the bank accounts of the inventors even though they were operating in academia at the time of invention? Pharma costs involve (a) cost to discover a drug, (b) cost to do drug trials, including all bureaucratic red tape in getting the drug approved, and (c) advertising and marketing (both to prospective patients and to the medical establishment). From what I've read, advertising costs exceed R&D. Surely, IP monopoly pricing should not be able to pass along arbitrary marketing costs. Some drugs are prescribed for serious health problems, some drugs are prescribed and taken on a more voluntary basis, and there's a gray area in between. Should IP owners be able to set arbitrary profit margins for drugs for more serious health problems? Who decides what's serious? The incentives for much of the pharma industry are all wrong: they market to doctors and potential end-users, even though end users are rarely capable of evaluating drugs, and even though doctors are influenced by marketing directed at them. This isn't so much a cost issue (other than advertising costs, above) but rather a public health issue. Some drugs might not be in the public's interest at all, even while being recommended by doctors, and paid for at inflated prices by patients and insurance companies. There are so many complications, I'm in favor of dealing with pharma IP separately.
  - rgbrenner 13y ago
    You only addressed part of the problem. The OP said IP.. so we're talking about trademarks in addition to patents. The pharma companies would lose the ability to patent a drug.. which means they would keep it a tradesecret instead. So generic may or may not be able to be produced. Second: without trademarks, pharma companies could invent Prilosec... and I (and anyone else) could sell a sugar pill named Prilosec. Or rat poison named Prilosec.. or any number of other items named Prilosec. This is not a result that is in anyones favor.
    - fishy929 13y ago
rgbrenner 13y ago
Intellectual property includes trademarks and copyright.. So what you're saying here is very radical. Knockoff (not necessarily the same formula) drugs sold with pfizers trademark. Gpl'd code used in commercial programs without attribution or contribution of changes. No software licenses.. No ability to sell software at all (since anyone could copy it and give it away for free).. And consumers lose the ability to tell who is selling what (since anyone can use anyone else's trademarks). I don't think most people would agree with such a radical change. Edit: even saas would be a problem.. Since a competitor to Amazon aws could call themselves amazonsaws.com, and use amazons logo etc (for ex)
- olalonde 13y ago
  As an aside, I wonder to what extent trademark laws could be made obsolete through technical means (using cryptography for example). Pfizer could cryptographically sign its labels. The problem is that counterfeiters could still copy labels from existing products. Maybe Pfizer could use a distributed ledger (e.g. Bitcoin) to prove the authenticity of its products? When Pfizer sells a product to a distributor, said distributor would require Pfizer to send a tiny transaction to their address. Known Pfizer address associated with product -> Distributor's address When the distributor sells the product to a retail shop, the retail shop could verify the product's authenticity by requiring the distributor to reveal an address that can be linked up to Pfizer's "known address associated with product". As part of the purchase process, the retail shop would in turn require the distributor to send a transaction from said address to their address so that they can in turn prove authenticity to their customers and so on. A valid transaction should spend the full amount of the seller's address (e.g. 1 satoshi) so that there is only one possible path from Pfizer's address to the final owner of the product. Known Pfizer address associated with product -> Distributor's address -> Retailer's address A product would then be considered counterfeit if a seller is unable to produce the type of transaction described above. One possible issue with this scheme is that it would still allow an hypothetical scammer to produce a valid transaction (assuming they previously bought the authentic product) and sell a fake product. However, there would be little economic incentive to do so given that their authentic product would now be valued as a fake (since they would have "lost" the ability to prove its authenticity). Essentially, it would let a scammer buy an authentic product for the price of a fake. Not bad, but it doesn't scale well unless your goal is to acquire a bunch of authentic products for personal use with no intention of reselling. In other words, individual sellers (e.g. on Craigslist) might do it but it wouldn't be practical at a business level. PS: I think I might just have described "colored coins" in a convoluted way.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

Snail_Commando 13y ago

> Abolish Intellectual Property. Period. > IP's time (if there ever was one) is over. There is no benefit for real inventors and artists anymore, merely for mega corporations to use the levers of government to maximize their profits at the expense of humanity and freedom. Nothing "intellectual" should be property. > I'm not against corporations or even mega corporations. I think they'd do better for themselves (and their users, more importantly) if they didn't waste years and $billions battling each other and bullying startups and individuals over IP. Instead, they should just focus of making better things. > [Quotation] This sounds like a noble rallying cry but is ultimately misguided. How does this system reconcile with the incentive structures inherent in pharmaceutical research and drug design?

harshreality 13y ago
Pharma is a special case. Can we separate IP into pharma and -other- and deal with them separately? Pharma "development" might be done by academics who get bought out by big pharma after their discovery, or it might be done originally by big pharma. Should pharma IP be protected so they can inflate prices to pad the bank accounts of the inventors even though they were operating in academia at the time of invention? Pharma costs involve (a) cost to discover a drug, (b) cost to do drug trials, including all bureaucratic red tape in getting the drug approved, and (c) advertising and marketing (both to prospective patients and to the medical establishment). From what I've read, advertising costs exceed R&D. Surely, IP monopoly pricing should not be able to pass along arbitrary marketing costs. Some drugs are prescribed for serious health problems, some drugs are prescribed and taken on a more voluntary basis, and there's a gray area in between. Should IP owners be able to set arbitrary profit margins for drugs for more serious health problems? Who decides what's serious? The incentives for much of the pharma industry are all wrong: they market to doctors and potential end-users, even though end users are rarely capable of evaluating drugs, and even though doctors are influenced by marketing directed at them. This isn't so much a cost issue (other than advertising costs, above) but rather a public health issue. Some drugs might not be in the public's interest at all, even while being recommended by doctors, and paid for at inflated prices by patients and insurance companies. There are so many complications, I'm in favor of dealing with pharma IP separately.
- rgbrenner 13y ago
  You only addressed part of the problem. The OP said IP.. so we're talking about trademarks in addition to patents. The pharma companies would lose the ability to patent a drug.. which means they would keep it a tradesecret instead. So generic may or may not be able to be produced. Second: without trademarks, pharma companies could invent Prilosec... and I (and anyone else) could sell a sugar pill named Prilosec. Or rat poison named Prilosec.. or any number of other items named Prilosec. This is not a result that is in anyones favor.
  - fishy929 13y ago

rgbrenner 13y ago

Intellectual property includes trademarks and copyright.. So what you're saying here is very radical. Knockoff (not necessarily the same formula) drugs sold with pfizers trademark. Gpl'd code used in commercial programs without attribution or contribution of changes. No software licenses.. No ability to sell software at all (since anyone could copy it and give it away for free).. And consumers lose the ability to tell who is selling what (since anyone can use anyone else's trademarks). I don't think most people would agree with such a radical change. Edit: even saas would be a problem.. Since a competitor to Amazon aws could call themselves amazonsaws.com, and use amazons logo etc (for ex)

olalonde 13y ago
As an aside, I wonder to what extent trademark laws could be made obsolete through technical means (using cryptography for example). Pfizer could cryptographically sign its labels. The problem is that counterfeiters could still copy labels from existing products. Maybe Pfizer could use a distributed ledger (e.g. Bitcoin) to prove the authenticity of its products? When Pfizer sells a product to a distributor, said distributor would require Pfizer to send a tiny transaction to their address. Known Pfizer address associated with product -> Distributor's address When the distributor sells the product to a retail shop, the retail shop could verify the product's authenticity by requiring the distributor to reveal an address that can be linked up to Pfizer's "known address associated with product". As part of the purchase process, the retail shop would in turn require the distributor to send a transaction from said address to their address so that they can in turn prove authenticity to their customers and so on. A valid transaction should spend the full amount of the seller's address (e.g. 1 satoshi) so that there is only one possible path from Pfizer's address to the final owner of the product. Known Pfizer address associated with product -> Distributor's address -> Retailer's address A product would then be considered counterfeit if a seller is unable to produce the type of transaction described above. One possible issue with this scheme is that it would still allow an hypothetical scammer to produce a valid transaction (assuming they previously bought the authentic product) and sell a fake product. However, there would be little economic incentive to do so given that their authentic product would now be valued as a fake (since they would have "lost" the ability to prove its authenticity). Essentially, it would let a scammer buy an authentic product for the price of a fake. Not bad, but it doesn't scale well unless your goal is to acquire a bunch of authentic products for personal use with no intention of reselling. In other words, individual sellers (e.g. on Craigslist) might do it but it wouldn't be practical at a business level. PS: I think I might just have described "colored coins" in a convoluted way.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]