Technology

So delete all pharmaceutical IP to make drugs accessible to everyone and save taxpayers trillions?

Do it., but also ensure that all work enters the public domain and is free for anyone to use, modify, commercialize, or basically whatever the GPL says.

I'm fully in favour of abolishing IP law for everyone, ideally globally.

Public domain everything.

IP law does 3 things that are incredibly important… but have been basically irrelevant between roughly 1995-2023.

1. Accurate attribution. Knowing who actually made a thing is super important for the continued development of ideas, as well as just granting some dignity to the inventor/author/creator.
2. Faithful reproduction. Historically, bootleg copies of things would often be abridged to save costs or modified to suit the politics of the bootlegger, but would still be sold under the original title. It’s important to know what the canonical original content is, if you’re going to judge it fairly and respond to it.
3. Preventing bootleggers from outcompeting original creators through scale.

Digital technology made these irrelevant for a while, because search engines could easily answer #1, digital copies are usually exact copies so #2 was not an issue, and digital distribution made #3 (scale) much more balanced.

But then came AI. And suddenly all 3 of these concerns are valid again. And we’ve got a population who just spent the past 30 years living in a world where IP law had zero upsides and massive downsides.

There’s no question that IP law is due for an overhaul. The question is: will we remember that it ever did anything useful, or will we exchange one regime of fatcats fucking over culture for another one?

They don't want to delete all IP law, they just want to delete the IP law which is preventing them from postponing the collapse of the AI hype a little bit more.

They want to do this so they can feed their ai models.

This isn’t as forward thinking as you’d want it to be.

For as much as they are abused, “IP laws” protect small and individual inventors, writers, composers, etc.

With no patent, copyright or trademark protections the billionaires will own or bury everything.

What is needed is to bring the laws back to their intended purpose.

... Delete... all... IP law?

So... just literally make all piracy legal, switch all gaming and tv show and movie production/consumption... to an optional donation model?

Fuck it, why not.

I am both an avid pirate and have a degree in econ, wrote papers as an undergrad on how to potentially reform the DMCA... and uh yeah, at this point yeah no one has any fucking idea how any thing works, everyone is an idiot, sure fuck it, blow it all up, why not.

Talking about "IP" as if it were a single thing confuses any debate. Copyright is not a patent, which is not a trademark - they do different things.

Software patents actually should be deleted. It is impractical to avoid accidentally infringing as there are multiple ways to describe the same system using totally different technical descriptions. Copyright for software was enough.

It's not a surprise that all these techbros who want to steal everything and feed it into their AI machines without paying a single fucking cent to the original creators all the sudden want to get rid of IP. They can lead by example by submitting their IP into the public domain.

Or maybe they're just massive frauds?

I’m cool with it. I think we should require almost everything to be public domain. But I think those personally contributing to the public domain should be recognized, and no one should be allowed to get rich off of it.

"Delete all IP law" say people who have never created anything of any value to humanity.

The libertarians want everything for free. Interesting.

The current US trade war is the perfect opportunity for some other country or countries to "right-size" their IP laws.

Hollywood wanted "lifetime plus 900 years" or whatever. So, whenever the US negotiated a trade deal it said "you only get tariff-free access to our markets if you give Hollywood lifetime plus 900 years in your country too."

With section 1201 of the DMCA this also meant that other countries had to accept that you could only repair your John Deere tractor if you paid Deere for the privilege. Or that HP could prevent you from using any ink but theirs in your printer, allowing them to make printer ink the most expensive liquid on the planet.

If the US is no longer abiding by the terms of their trade agreements, other countries should no longer honor these absurd IP treaties.

Why not get rid of the patent trolls, the monopolies shelving useful technologies through patent loopholes, the ... Oh I see the tech billionaires again wanting to uproot a system because loopholes are just too much effort now.

I hate agreeing with these assholes, but I do in this case. IP/patent law is explicitly designed to stifle competition. At most, it should last a few years (if you agree with the "recoup the cost of innovation" argument). Innovation will be done for the sake of innovation if there's competition though. If your opposition innovates and you don't, you're going to be destroyed. The exception is when they agree to not compete, which is already illegal though not enforced as strongly as it should be.

Yes, I’m fully aware we want to abolish IP law for different reasons but still, I’m onboard.

Dorsey got fired from his own company by the board for incompetence.

This would be disastrous for actual manufacturing because a patent is the only thing that makes it worthwhile to spend a bunch of money upfront to develop a new technology. Unlike with software where you don't have nearly as much up front capital investment to develop something, it costs millions of dollars to get a manufacturing process up and running and in a good enough state to where it can actually work out financially. Without patents, your competitor can just take all of that work and investment and just copy it with the benefit of doing it right the first time, so they're able to undercut you on cost. The alternative is that everyone is super secretive about what they're doing and no knowledge is shared, which is even worse. Patents are an awesome solution to this problem because they are public documents that explain how technologies work, but the law allows a monopoly on that technology for a limited amount of time. I also feel that in the current landscape, copyright is probably also good (although I would prefer it to be more limited) because I don't want people who are actually coming up with new ideas having to compete with thousands of AI slop copycats ruining the market.

TL;DR- patents are good if you're actually building things, tech bros are morons who think everything is software.

Honestly, I'm a fan of abolishing IP law too, but for some reason I suspect the implementation of that they support is very different than the one I support

i'd also like to delete all billionaires

I think ip laws are important but need to be changed. One example are things that are funded by tax dollars. They can’t own the ip of something we funded even if partially funded. Maybe let them hold the ip until they recoup their cost.

I also think that it is OK for companies to have ip, but it needs to be shorter. Like, they get 10 years or they earn 10x their cost on developing it.

Im not saying my exact ideas are perfect, but just an example of how ip should not last for as long as it does.

I mean, I'd like to get rid of IP Law too....

But I actually mean get rid of, not an "Under New Management" sense like Elon The Musky Husky wants

Musk is out to delete all laws that don't benefit him, and replace them with harsh private rules that are not accountable to the people.

Oh no, this is so... good idea. Yarr! Pirate Party approves.

Disney has entered the chat

If Elon agrees with anything… run.

A real nuisance for all those AI datasets, huh?