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Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

locusmag.com

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Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#201

Post by selfhoster11 »

bigiain wrote: post #159
jasonjayr wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the public signing key, that's already installed via presumably verified initial media is already there, so unless their private key is compromised, which would be a bigger deal ....

> installed via presumably verified initial media This is not a universally correct assumption. How does this chain of trust bootstrap for a first time (or stand alone) user who downloads Ubuntu from a non-Ubuntu system? If I've got MITM, I can change both the ISO (with the totally-not-verified public key) as well as the gpg sig to match using a private key I know (and gave you the public key to).

Side-channel verification with the distro developers. Contact them over a channel that's unlikely to be compromised, get them to confirm that the keys in the system signature keyrings belong to them. Repeat for many channels until you get enough confidence.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#202

Post by selfhoster11 »

andreilys wrote: post #120
losteric wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recipes do not have patent protection, yet there is plenty of innovation in restaurants. There are many paths to an innovation. I don't think the first person deserves such a monopoly. American IP law, in combination with the generally letigious society, has always seemed like a net source of innovation friction...

Creating a new recipe doesn’t involve billions of dollars in research as is the case in pharma. A company that spends billions of dollars in research assumes they will be able to recoup the cost by having a monopoly on the drug they developed. If however competitors can flood the market with the same drug, they cannot recoup the cost and will subsequently go bankrupt. Without the proper incentives you can’t expect co…

Medicine development should be sponsored by the government anyway. Private sector development funding optimises for drawn-out therapies that manage a condition indefinitely rather than ones that cure it. This is an unconscionable status quo.

Public funding is fine for when your end-goal is known. In medicine, the end-goal is known: cure/manage condition X, which will save lives or improving quality of life of sufferers.

Optimising for patentable, innovative techniques is no longer a distraction (because those aren't needed to "protect your investment"). Optimising for ongoing therapy rather than a one-off/infrequent cure is no longer a distraction because you already got your money from the government and ain't getting any more. You can just focus on getting the job done quickly, with the cheapest techniques available (though boring they might be), and with the cheapest possible total cost of running the therapy start-to-end.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#203

Post by pdkl95 »

wait_a_minute wrote: post #53
breck wrote: post #36

We need to abolish IP Laws (aka "Imaginary Property" aka "Illogical Property" aka "Incongruent Property" aka "Invalidates Property Laws"—the other term is a big lie, don't repeat it). Not "reform". Not "compromise". Abolish. If 2020 taught me anything, it's that society can come close to the brink pretty quickly. I thought there was an inevitable trend toward freedom, but recently think it's perilous. We need ideas t…

I am genuinely interested in understanding how we could have innovation in a world where a creator is not entitled to benefits from their invention. Including any monetary benefits if they so choose.

Andrew "bunnie" Huang explains an alternative model of innovation in his talk An Alternative to the American way of Innovation[1].

The over-simplified summary is that instead of worrying about the losing the monopoly protection of copyrights and patents - which are expensive to enforce and often bypassed - consider the new types of innovation that become possible when you have access to the all of the knowledge that was previously locked behind IP monopolies.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S39fhrGjr4U

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#204

Post by chordalkeyboard »

adwn wrote: post #191
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sunshine and enjoyment of your work is not sufficient to sustain your body, not to speak of all the other needs that effectively require money to be fulfilled. You've neglected to argue as to why these needs should be artificially subsidized by the issuance of state-enforced monopolies for certain concepts.

> You've neglected to argue as to why these needs should be artificially subsidized by the issuance of state-enforced monopolies for certain concepts. ... What? Avicebron argued that "financial reciprocation" should not be a priority of a creator, I countered that idealism won't keep you alive for long, and that creators need to make money to be able to create. Your post is completely beside the point.

Why do they need special laws to subsidize their creation? People can pay them to make their work, that's historically how things were done. Now suddenly they need special laws so its illegal to take a photograph in public without permission? Of course they need to get paid in order to live and to work, so do I, so does everyone else. Can we now discuss why creators are so special that they get an entire class of quasi-property rights where enforcement is subsidized by the state?

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#205

Post by selfhoster11 »

worik wrote: post #154
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> weather the pandemic overall in incredible comfort due to technology and content created under our IP regime strike "under" insert "in spite of" > demonstrate that we'd have these things without the IP environment of past 100 years. IP are laws that prohibit who is allowed to manufacture and profit by certain types of goods. The burden of proof rests on those who think that those goods would not exist if more peopl…

I do not think your beef is with IP. I think you are anti private property. If private property exists, with any sort of free exchange, then IP that takes resources to produce and nothing to copy will need protection under some sort of property law. A high tech society is imaginable in the absence of private property, but generally the abolition of private property is not considered as a serious option.

> I do not think your beef is with IP. I think you are anti private property.

I can see no evidence that this is the case, just based on that comment.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#206

Post by boomlinde »

adwn wrote: post #166
Avicebron wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because if financial reciprocation is your first incentive to be creative you've already lost the mind game. If you are a creative, you will understand that sometimes we just like to do things...

You can't eat self-actualization, nor can you build houses from it. Sunshine and enjoyment of your work is not sufficient to sustain your body, not to speak of all the other needs that effectively require money to be fulfilled.

Then again, I work all week with little entitlement to the "intellectual property" I generate, but I still receive income for my work. Making a livelihood by getting paid for the work I do and its value on the market, and the time I spend doing it and its value to me is the situation most people are in.

Being able to extract substantial rent in effective perpetuity from e.g. some copyright you own is a luxury only afforded to a relatively small minority, and ideally I think only productive work should be awarded, not rent. That will incentivize productive work rather than rent seeking.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#207

Post by selfhoster11 »

ericwood wrote: post #37
jl6 wrote: post #2

The chaos and banditry is caused by software churn. Nothing is ever finished, so nothing is ever secure, so you must ally yourself with a powerful warlord. This is why I am in the process of migrating my website from HTML to PDF/A.

This confuses me; the core of HTML is relatively unchanged since its inception and static HTML is fairly secure. PDF is notoriously complex and has had many security issues associated with it as a result. Regardless, if it's content you're producing I'm imagining it can be done securely with either format?

PDF/A is a reduced subset of PDF, optimised for archival storage. A compliant PDF/A reader has a greatly reduced attack surface compared to a full PDF format reader.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#208

Post by nickpp »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #202
andreilys wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Creating a new recipe doesn’t involve billions of dollars in research as is the case in pharma. A company that spends billions of dollars in research assumes they will be able to recoup the cost by having a monopoly on the drug they developed. If however competitors can flood the market with the same drug, they cannot recoup the cost and will subsequently go bankrupt. Without the proper incentives you can’t expect co…

Medicine development should be sponsored by the government anyway. Private sector development funding optimises for drawn-out therapies that manage a condition indefinitely rather than ones that cure it. This is an unconscionable status quo. Public funding is fine for when your end-goal is known. In medicine, the end-goal is known: cure/manage condition X, which will save lives or improving quality of life of suffere…

> Private sector development funding optimises for drawn-out therapies that manage a condition indefinitely rather than ones that cure it.

And still, Moderna and BioNTech came up with vaccines for COVID-19, not therapies.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#209

Post by tomjen3 »

ericwood wrote: post #37
jl6 wrote: post #2

The chaos and banditry is caused by software churn. Nothing is ever finished, so nothing is ever secure, so you must ally yourself with a powerful warlord. This is why I am in the process of migrating my website from HTML to PDF/A.

This confuses me; the core of HTML is relatively unchanged since its inception and static HTML is fairly secure. PDF is notoriously complex and has had many security issues associated with it as a result. Regardless, if it's content you're producing I'm imagining it can be done securely with either format?

PDF/A is meant for archive purposes (e.g remain pixel perfectly the same when read out of some tape archive 50 years from now archival purposes) and doesn't allow things like javascript. Plus it requires fonts to be embedded.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#210

Post by selfhoster11 »

nickpp wrote: post #208
selfhoster11 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medicine development should be sponsored by the government anyway. Private sector development funding optimises for drawn-out therapies that manage a condition indefinitely rather than ones that cure it. This is an unconscionable status quo. Public funding is fine for when your end-goal is known. In medicine, the end-goal is known: cure/manage condition X, which will save lives or improving quality of life of suffere…

> Private sector development funding optimises for drawn-out therapies that manage a condition indefinitely rather than ones that cure it. And still, Moderna and BioNTech came up with vaccines for COVID-19, not therapies.

That's a great development which I welcome whole-heartedly, but I don't think this diminishes my broader argument. There are still many conditions besides COVID-19 that only have a therapy available but no cure because of business reasons.
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