Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

locusmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 255 posts

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#231

Post by breck »

adwn wrote: post #216
boomlinde wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 af…

> Making a livelihood by getting paid for the work I do and its value on the market [...] You're only getting paid because people have to pay you the market rate for your work. If a musician creates and records a song [1], releases it at market rates (say, 2 USD), and everyone can just copy it without repercussions, he won't be able to make a living, no matter how productive he is. [1] Which entails many hours of wor…

I've talked to a thousand people like this and generally they seem immune to logical conversations. If you are in the 1% who gets a nice fat check thanks to IP laws, hurray for you. I've been there too, it's a nice comfortable life. You can promote the Big Lie all you want, but any smart honest person will figure out eventually that IP is evil from every angle.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#232

Post by acoard »

andreilys wrote: post #121
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a world where a creator is not entitled to benefits from their invention This is a mis-statement of the anti-IP case. Given the abolishment of IP laws, creators are not prevented from benefitting from their invention. They merely no longer have the benefit of the state regulators in preventing others from following the inventor's example. > Including any monetary benefits if they so choose. The "monetary benefit" h…

So Disney can steal the work of amateur animators and not pay them a dime. Great.

Disney originally got rich from animating public domain stories, like Cinderella and Snow White. These were the popular stories of the day that people grew up with. Now after nearly a century of Disney, who has bought Star Wars and Marvel, Disney owns all the stories people grow up with. They built up their IP moat using public domain stories, and have used IP law to maintain their incumbency.

To me, the solution is to let the cycle repeat. Let the next animation company start making stories about Spidier-Man or Luke Skywalker. Sure, keep the trademarks so you can't say "Marvels™ Spidier-Man", but John Smith should be able to take a crack at his version of Spider-Man just like Walt got his version of Cinderella.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#233

Post by ethbr0 »

opportune wrote: post #228
ethbr0 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Governments likely have access to back doors and 0days that can compromise anyone * anyone running a certain configuration Bugs don't exist in a vacuum. They exist in a specific piece of software, which usually supports a specific feature (e.g. Flash, Microsoft Word, or TCP/IP). Curious in more informed opinions, but it seems unlikely there's a large universe of zero days applicable to every configuration out there…

What I first replied to is about a specific private key algorithm that doesn’t have any patterns, and using it over something that can’t be backdoored. Using OTP is not just using crypto, it is pretty much the only “uncrackable” encryption if used properly. My point is that using something like PGP to communicate over TOR (or even OTP over TOR) doesn’t matter if whoever you are trying to hide from has a backdoor to y…

> no way to protect against an undocumented bug in some software you depend on

I understand the point you're making, but I feel like it's overstating the frequency.

Of all the code in a piece of software, only some amount will have bugs. Of those bugs, only some will be executable in your configuration. Of that buggy code, only some will create security issues. Of those security issues, only some will be network-exploitable.

That's a lot of partitioning.

So it's fair to say systems run on other systems, but I don't think it's fair to say it's likely that every system has an undiscovered, network accessible security vulnerability.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#234

Post by nickpp »

breck wrote: post #229
adwn wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are still many conditions besides COVID-19 that only have a therapy available but no cure because of business reasons. Name three, and give reasons to believe that there's no cure for business reasons . If you can't name at least three (of the "many conditions"), then how can you be so sure of this?

#1) Psychedelics/psilocybin for mental health. Cost basically $0 to produce but the US Mental Health industry was a $225B industry in 2019. Now though big pharma sees the writing on the wall, so is inventing patented variations ( https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/12/09/9445723... ) because otherwise these natural substances that people have been taking for thousands of years wouldn't be "safe". #2) Oxyco…

1) Psilocybin research was, and it probably still is in most of the world, made ILLEGAL by governments. Another causality of the war on drugs, who wrongly imprisoned thousands and caused countless victims so that a few politicians get re-elected.

2) > We have far better cures

So you’re saying there are cures. Great then. Please re-read the gp's question. For 3) as well...

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#236

Post by adwn »

breck wrote: post #231
adwn wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Making a livelihood by getting paid for the work I do and its value on the market [...] You're only getting paid because people have to pay you the market rate for your work. If a musician creates and records a song [1], releases it at market rates (say, 2 USD), and everyone can just copy it without repercussions, he won't be able to make a living, no matter how productive he is. [1] Which entails many hours of wor…

I've talked to a thousand people like this and generally they seem immune to logical conversations. If you are in the 1% who gets a nice fat check thanks to IP laws, hurray for you. I've been there too, it's a nice comfortable life. You can promote the Big Lie all you want, but any smart honest person will figure out eventually that IP is evil from every angle.

> I've talked to a thousand people like this and generally they seem immune to logical conversations.

Are you talking about me? Which part of my posts is not "logical"?

> If you are in the 1% who gets a nice fat check thanks to IP laws, hurray for you.

I'm not. Some people are able to hold opinions that don't directly benefit them. Inconceivable, right?

> You can promote the Big Lie all you want, but any smart honest person will figure out eventually that IP is evil from every angle.

That's not even an argument. And you're accusing me of being "immune to logical conversations"?

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#237

Post by harimau777 »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #130
harimau777 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that many creators would struggle to benefit if their creations can be trivially copied by others.

They might struggle to sell licenses to their ideas, given that license is merely permission to perform a trivial task they are equally prepared to perform sans license, they could always benefit by selling their creative labor as work on the market.

That would mean that artists were only able to make money if they are working directly for someone else. That doesn't seem fair.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#238

Post by breck »

boxed wrote: post #198
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…

IP includes trade marks. We absolutely can't abolish that. So be careful when you say stuff like this.

I'm not actually sure we need government to enforce trademarks. All a trademark system is is a central registry. Seems like the private sector does just fine with that (domain name system, github, npm, twitter, etc).

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#239

Post by breck »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #168
medlyyy wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These arguments get trotted out every time this comes up, and they are bad. >1. The inventor would pay the R&D costs with no good way to recoup them, because he'd be competing against knockoffs who didn't have to make that investment, and can price accordingly. You'd be putting the actual inventor at a disadvantage. It's now clear that there are plenty of ways to fund R&D without relying on IP law to recoup the costs…

This is an excellent reply and if the pro-IP crowd has any response, I'd be interested to read it.

Agreed. Really interesting read. Was surprised to see it downvoted.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#240

Post by breck »

adwn wrote: post #224
medlyyy wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These arguments get trotted out every time this comes up, and they are bad. >1. The inventor would pay the R&D costs with no good way to recoup them, because he'd be competing against knockoffs who didn't have to make that investment, and can price accordingly. You'd be putting the actual inventor at a disadvantage. It's now clear that there are plenty of ways to fund R&D without relying on IP law to recoup the costs…

Discussions like the current one make me wish we had huge but relatively affordable space habitats [1]. People with a radical idea for restructuring society [2] could pool their resources, build/buy a space habitat, and prove that their way is superior to the status quo (or fail miserably, or something inbetween) [3]. This way, empirical evidence could be collected, and radical ideas could be tested and adopted if th…

This is a good point and we do indeed have it in a way: countries that have allowed piracy to flourish have seen a big boom in economic activity over the past 2 decades (China being the most notable example).
Post reply on HN