The only people who claim Intellectual Property isn't real or shouldn't be respected also tend to be the same people who cant support themselves off of intellectual pursuits.

Why is it always the second someone doesnt personally benefit from a right, any right, is the moment they think that right should be abolished?

#IP #copyrights #economics

@freemo

IP is artificial scarcity, which IMO is not beneficial to society at large and actually hinders progress instead of promoting it.

I acknowledge that there are lots of shades of gray in this, but it's generally how I consider IP.

BTW, as a software developer I absolutely could embrace IP in order to make money. I choose not to.

@jcbrand @freemo I personally see it as a threat to culture, knowledge and art. If something is not seen as profitable enough, if it's more useful and/or inspiring than initially perceived, we lose public or any access to the wonders of the world. It'd be like tearing up the cure for cancer or blowing up historical sites.

I would, at the very least, prefer a wider implementation of copycentre or copyleft licensing if eradicating copyright isn't immediately possible.

@freeloader2020

One of the requirements for a patent is that the idea being patent can not be obviously or trivially derived from other patents or known ideas. This implies that in order to patent something, and have that patent hold up in court, you have either put significant work into the creation of the idea or be superiorly gifted and capable of significant intellectual output for your efforts. The other requirement is the patent must be "useful" in some way.

Now of course in practice whether this law is actually upheld is another matter, I do find some trivial patents are sometimes upheld through the shear might of a team of lawyers, and that is a problem that needs fixing.

But the point here is that if a person is going to invest significant effort or talent into creating something useful and new they should and do have the right to decide if they want to be compensated for their effort or not.

The original intent of patents were to empower the people, not necessarily companies. This should be apparent if you consider the situation in some detail. Without patents any novel ideas would need to be held secret and applied to some process in a way that enhances the process in order to make money off of it. There would be no way to make money off the idea directly.

Imagine an idea someone had whereby they could create soda cans that were capable of holding the same pressure but use half the metal content to do so. Without patents a person with such an idea would have no way to profit off of it. Their choices would be to either forget the idea, or to offer it to the public whereby soda manufacturers would be able to steal and exploit his idea to make profit without giving anything to the individual. Similarly without his idea being patented he could not approach a soda-manufacturer in private to sell the idea because by simply describing the idea the company could steal the idea and not need to pay the person a penny.

The inventor has no way to profit as an individual and by eliminating patents only large companies benefit since they have the means to keep their own ideas private and profit off them directly while simultaneously being able to steal any ideas that generous investors offer to the public.

Patents make sense because now it gives the inventor a choice, they can either putt heir idea to the public domain, or they can patent it and control who can use their idea, and how, and under what conditions. In fact it is quite common to patent ideas when you have the intention of open-sourcing them because a patent lets you control the conditions under which an invention can be shared or modified freely as well. I can dictate that anyone who improves on my invention and releases their improvement under the same conditions are welcome to utilize my patent royalty free, while any commercial uses of my idea are forbidden entirely.

So in a sense allowing for patents is exactly the way you can enable people to create copyleft-like licenses on inventions (which do not work in the case of copyrights).

On the flip side in a world with patents a independent inventor can make money and be self sufficient inventing ideas, patenting and selling it. In a world without patents such a person has no recourse from income and the only option for an inventor is to be an employee and a "slave" for a company that can force the person to give up million dollar ideas for a low pittance of an hourly wage.

Most people have patents backwards, they empower the people first and foremost, at least when the original laws and intents of patents are honored.

@jcbrand

That's rhetoric @freemo, not intent.

The sole goal of patents is to reinforce the existing power structure of society so that no innovation can suddenly challenge it.

Think about numbers: who is going to fill more patents claim? Who is going to defend them in courts?

Inventors (and authors, for copyright law) are just excuses to justify laws that slow down progress and culture just to maximise the profit and the power of the riches.

@freeloader2020 @jcbrand

@Shamar

Bull, the Patent Act was passed one year after the constitution was rattified. It was as much a part of the founding fathers intentions as the constitution itself. If one thing is clear the founding fathers intentions was always a structure that focused on individual rights first and foremost.

As such it is quite clear the original intention of patent law and patents was to enable individual rights, not diminish them.

While you're most welcome to argue that the intention of patents aren't being realized under current laws, and in some ways I would agree with you, to argue the intention of patents were not to enable individual liberties is clearly not the case for anyone who has studied the intentions of the founding fathers that enacted it.

@freeloader2020 @jcbrand