Intellectual Property should be abolished - change my mind!
Hey mateys! I made a post at /c/libertarianism [/c/[email protected]] about the abolition of IP. Maybe some of you will find it interesting.
How so? I agree with you that this measure will fundamentally change the reasons for innovation. Innovation itself will no longer be lucrative because you cannot be sure that you will be rewarded for your research.
In my opinion, it will rather arise from the urge to deliver a better end product with which one can differentiate oneself from the competition for some time. Or out of a thirst for knowledge that is fuelled by the fact that all knowledge is openly accessible. Or from the sense of community that comes from working together on a project to improve one’s own skill and improve circumstances for all.
Intellectual property protects smaller innovators from larger companies. Imagine if you developed a novel process for solving a problem much cheaper than current methods. Now imagine if you started making some serious money doing this, and it starts to make some noise. What’s to stop Amazon from just copying your process, and making it better/cheaper? They have the money to completely down you out.
Without Intellectual Property upkeep rights, any megacorp will just copy your idea and sell it for less at a broader scale, and cut you out of the market.
Indeed.
Obviously, then, megacorps should be abolished.
None of those motivations you listed actually need IP to be abolished though.
If you're trying to differentiate yourself from the competitors, having IP protection is jn your favor. The large corporation you're competing with can't just swoop in and destroy you by making an identical product at a such a loss of profit until you run out of money.
If you're fueled by creating open source knowledge, well you can already do that. You can choose to release your IP into the world for anyone to use unrestricted.
And for a sense of community, well that's just the second point again. Abolishing IP was never going to make you feel community with Amazon. But having IP isn't preventing you from having community with individuals. You can still work on a project together without abandoning the idea of IP ownership.
Because those big businesses are only motivated by the profit possibilities.
If you take away that protection then they'll just stop trying. They don't give a shit about any of the motivations you listed. They'll wait for you to come up with something new, then use the advantage of their size to force you out of the market. You'll end up either giving up or trying again at which point they'll just repeat the cycle.
And there's nothing you can do to stop them because now you they can be as open as blatant as they want with directly using your exact plans.
Do you actually care that much about the creative story behind the latest widget that was added to your new appliance? Are you going to be choosing the 30% more expensive option every time because of that concern.
We aren't talking about art here, very few people give a shit about getting a "personal connection" with their new toaster. We're talking about buy use forget consumer goods. And if someone else is selling the same quality and the same features at a lower price, that's the one that your average Joe will buy. And will keep buying until you can't afford to keep making and selling yours because you can't compete on the metrics that people care about most.
Exactly.
Everyone loves to support local independent small businesses when it's convenient. And some people even have the gumption to hold to those ideals when it's difficult. But the vast majority don't care most of the time.
When big business makes it cheaper and more convenient to buy from them, most people will. I'm just as guilty of that as anyone else. When money and time are plentiful I love supporting a local bakery for lunch and a local book store for that greeting card. But when I'm pressed for time or money is short, it's straight back to Walmart to get a card and an entire meal for the price of one baked snack from the local place. And in 10 minutes instead of half an hour.
And the megacorps don't need a majority market share to win. They don't even need a large enough market share to be profitable, they just need to make sure your market share is too small to survive. And once you fail, then they can change practices away from kill competition and back to make money.
I do think it’s helpful to ensure that companies feel comfortable spending money on development, but it stifles innovation and progress when we can’t open up the playing field after they’ve already made boatloads of money.
How many medications out there are still printing money when a generic would cost like 5 cents? How many creative projects get censored or scrapped because they too closely resemble some megacorp’s IP? How many technologies are out there that can’t be openly built upon because some company owns the rights and wants to milk it for another decade?
Intellectual property protects smaller innovators from larger companies. Imagine if you developed a novel process for solving a problem much cheaper than current methods. Now imagine if you started making some serious money doing this, and it starts to make some noise. What’s to stop Amazon from just copying your process, and making it better/cheaper? They have the money to completely down you out.
Without Intellectual Property upkeep rights, any megacorp will just copy your idea and sell it for less at a broader scale, and cut you out of the market.
Problem solving is basically patent. After all what is stopping a megacorp from using the same solution but in such a way that doesn't copy the exact work? Software for example, with current IP law, clean room reverse engineering is completely legal.
Think of how Tribute of Panem and Divergent almost have the exact same story beats but are still separate IP. IP protects singular works, like authors and their books, artists and their work.
Even with IP, there is very little stopping the big actors from developing something similar but debatable distinct, at a larger scale. By the time the lawsuit clears, they've wrecked your profitablity.
In fact, more often you see big companies act as patent trolls, using IP as a bludgeon to threaten smaller players who don't have an army of lawyers. See, DMCA takedowns to suppress speech, patent trolls, and esp trademark nonsense.
Trade secrets fit your example best, but more often than not that's something that relies on worker restrictions rather than traditional "IP"
I’m not opposed to intellectual property because there’s an argument for providing a limited time monopoly to the creators of works to provide incentive to make works public. Without any such incentive, it’s entirely possible that the monetization structures for different works change, for example locking content behind restrictive systems that don’t allow for personal use at all.
The key is “limited time”. If you can’t make your money back in 15 years, then maybe it’s time to make a new thing? The idea that someone should own a thing you made after you’re dead is stupid – how exactly will that promote you to create new works? If you’re dead, your creating days are over except for creating plant food out of your bones and organs.
I put my money where my mouth is, and the legal page of the graysonian ethic specifically lists that the book is put into the public domain or license after Creative Commons CC0 license after 15 years from the date of first publishing.
I’d say no more than 10 years for ANYTHING. Copyright, patent, you name it. I would also prohibit any and all software and design patents.
Trademark would last only as long as actively in use.
Pharmaceuticals is about the worst example you could pick to make a point. It’s notorious for socializing the cost and privatizing the profit (not to mention the ethics of price gouging life saving medication treatments).
Here’s what Johnson&Johnson is doing right now with a TB drug whose development was paid largely with public funding:
The pill, called bedaquiline, was first approved in 2012 as the first new TB drug in over 40 years and revolutionized treatment for drug-resistant infections. But its relatively high cost limited access in many low- and middle-income countries hit hardest by an epidemic that still kills around 1.5 million people every year, most of them among the world’s poorest. The company initially charged $900 per course in low-income countries, according to a 2016 report, but gradually lowered it to $340 three years ago.
The secondary patent particularly irked some advocates because the drug’s development was largely underwritten by public funds, according to a 2020 analysis. That study found public sector funds contributed $455 million to $747 million to getting bedaquiline to market, compared to $90 million to $240 million from J&J.
The pharmaceutical companies would definitely not cut back on their profits, so they would either get public money to make it several times faster, or they would cut back on quality and safety (*lobbies have entered the chat); and in either case the final price would be higher.
There is plenty of room to get worse, even in the current favorable conditions they prioritize well-known cost-effective palliative treatments over research into solutions.
If the entire health sector were public and concerned itself with saving lives instead of making money, it would be a different story, but that is where we get into major reforms.
The problem is noted by Karl Marx, the capitalist inevitably captures the government and its regulating departments so that the body of laws will be revised in their favor. Remember that the point of copyright laws in the Constitution of the United States, to promote science and the useful arts was killed when IP was extended. Every year that someone owns an idea is year that the rest of us does not.
I don’t know the solution, but corruption of the temporary monopoly was inevitable.
They still wouldn’t though. Think about it this way:
Amazon paid big bucks for the rights to make a lord of the rings show and did a shit job for the amount of money they spent.
The last season of GoT spent more than every other season and couldn’t touch the early seasons in terms of quality.
Money =/= good art
Might as well at least make it so the big spenders can’t hold the IP hostage.
FWIW I do actually think IP is a good idea but it should only last like 5 years tops. Maybe longer for industrial patents/inventions. This “Life of the author + X decades” stuff is horseshit.
FWIW I do actually think IP is a good idea but it should only last like 5 years tops
If I’m not mistaken research has concluded that the optimal IP duration is 14 years. Even if it’s triple your duration it would mean that the current IP laws are objectively shit.
Nothing good is going to happen until the working class is represented in government.
But the scope of this discussion is how OP should feel about IP, which assumes they have a say first.
In reality it doesn't work out that way though. What actually happens is that the deepest pockets are the ones who can patent everything under the sun, and who can buy out all the poor copyright holders at bargain prices.
In theory it can work, if there are sufficient regulations on what can be patented, and anti-trust policies. But again, in reality the holders of capital rewrite the laws in their favor because money is liquid and industries are porous.
These sorts of laws favor the wealthy, at least in practice.
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