Intellectual Property should be abolished - change my mind!

Other than liking the nice round number of 20 years, that’s exactly my take. Copyright longevity creates perverse incentives for rights holders, and it locks down the ability of other creators to use common cultural references.

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.

Now you're talking

I disagree that trademark should be abolished, but agree that copyright is made so rich can hoard their money without worry, because others can't copy their ideas.

Trademark is: Your distinguished name, brand, logo, etc so you can be distinguished and can be recognized. A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time.[

Donations and crowdfunds are the most common suggestions.

Or to come at it from another angle - 38% of the USA's GDP comes from IP, and its primary beneficiaries are wealthy. If we paid towards a UBI instead of copyright holders, then many people would just make these things for free, with total creative freedom. The messages in our art and direction of our technology would radically change.

That's not far off from what Amazon currently does.

Amazon would not be able to monopolize the sale of ebooks if it was legal to distribute them for free, people would just go download the free versions elsewhere. This is already more or less reality; you can easily go download most any book for free, and have effectively no risk of getting in trouble for it, yet somehow most people do not do this.

I think that if an author provides a way that people can pay them directly for having written a book, social convention could take care of the rest, many people will give them money voluntarily, just like they currently do, because they want to. There's lots of platforms now that operate on the principle that people will just choose to give money to creators even when they don't have to and it isn't a purchase of anything tangible.

I assume UBI. Already quality of product is not cultivated by the current publishing system. People who get their books published do so by affording a good agent with connections, which rules out the black kid using a manual typewriter her brother rebuilt.

What would prevent us from copying their stuff? They copy ours we copy theirs. We copy and distribute verything and in the end all are happy lol

This is the decision of the consumers. If we as a society do not want the big corporations to become too powerful, we should not give them any money. Most people will have to learn the hard way when their own ideas are sold cheaper elsewhere until they understand that it is better to support the original and the actual creator. But anything else is pure paternalism, which I cannot support. I am of course aware that there will always be people who will take advantage of this situation. But everyone must decide for themselves whether it is worth it. Otherwise, the product may no longer exist.

As I said: In a free market, supply can be determined by demand. So if most people stopped ordering shit on amazon every day, we wouldn't be where we are now. First of all, everyone can take a look at their own nose and not blame everything on daddy state. As if that would help you in any way.

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.

Maybe capitalism doesn't work, except for the richest capitalists?

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.

I thought IP existed to encourage the creation of more inventions and books by reducing free riders (like us). Why does it prevent the deepest pockets from stealing the market for everything? What would that look like?

Don't they already do that, I've seen a couple articles about things people sell on Amazon getting copied and sold as Amazon basics and the person going into near bankruptcy trying to prove their IP in court.

Honestly that sounds so much better than what we've currently got, a lifetime + 70 years.

Most IP owners didn't create what they have, but bought it off someone else. I have little pity for rich people.

You really can’t imagine an artist that doesn’t buy into intellectual property, can you? It’s unfathomable to you.

Exactly: Who has the greater power in the end: the company or the consumer? You only have to look at reddit: When we stand up together and support each other, we are strong. In my opinion, this is prevented by "consumer protection measures" that are exploited by the corpos anyway, and in the end it is always the uninformed penniless person who is the stupid one.

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 the circumstances for all.

That would be a great first step and this is exactly why I have initiated this discussion. It helps me to align my behaviour with what I personally consider to be optimal and then act accordingly. Everything I create to improve my situation I also want to share with the world.

And as a fun fact: without IP there is no need for copyleft or open source licenses because theoretically you can reverse engineer everything. But that doesn't make the open source community obsolete. There will still be a distinction between people who openly share their source and solution and those who try to hide it from everyone.

I license all my output (code, music) under the Unlicense.

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"

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.

In your world where companies have more power than the consumer, yes that would be worse. But what if abolishing IP just changes this? What if the consumers will be able to copy anything the big corpos made? What if we learn to build strong and resilient communities?

I mean the non-sarcastic answer is because putting better rules in place defeats the purpose of libertarianism. The sarcastic answer is because they're too naiive to think of an alternative and too lazy to think about the consequences. Lol

Trademarks and copyright are intellectual property.