There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010) • Hacker News Board

Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

#31

Post by slver » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 7:06 AM UTC

Nobody would invest billions in IP if someone from the street can walk by and take it.Is that such a complex subject to understand? IP is not a different concept than property.

People like to say "you can't actually steal IP, you get to keep yours". Of course you can steal IP, by using it or redistributing it without compensating the creator, you reduce the value of their IP. You stole from them by taking part of the value of the IP for yourself, robbing THEM from having it.

Scenario: an inventor invests 10 million for a product and makes 20 million in sales. He goes to invest the 10 million profit in his next invention.

Alternate scenario: an inventor invests 10 million for a product and makes 1 million in sales, because competitors use his IP for free and saturated the market. Inventor goes bankrupt.

Call it anything you want, but to me the competitors stole $19 million from the inventor. Yes, we can't predict the future, so it's harder to argue hypothetical situations. But seriously can't we put 2+2 together?

Plus IP expires. It's not like patents and so on forever stay the property if someone. Eventually they become available to everyone in all their documented and archived glory at the patent office.

Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

#32

Post by cturner » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 7:06 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #24

The arguments for IP (and intangible personal property more generally) are the same as for property in general: giving those who take action which produces value exclusive rights in the value producing thing promotes development of value which benefits the community. That’s not to say I don’t understand the arguments for generally more limited property rights, but I find right-libertarian, generally property-rights-m…

“action which produces value exclusive rights...” This does not describe “property in general”. (Also, it is gobbledegook.) The concept of property (excluding ip) is extremely straightforward - control of something scarce. Things called IP are not inherently scarce, and the arguments used to justify it are plainly not the same.

Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

#33

Post by sdesalas » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 7:06 AM UTC

While i agree that property rights are usually excessive, i doubt the author has ever spent hours crafting their own artwork and had someone use it for their advertising without the courtesy of asking.

Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

#34

Post by LordDragonfang » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 7:09 AM UTC

ruined wrote: post #12

reissbaker wrote: post #7

medicine have been produced for ages without IP law Er... I think there's a fairly sizable difference between modern medicine, in which we can develop an effective cure for a pandemic within a year of the pandemic starting, and historical medicine in which the Black Death ravaged countries for years and was never cured, only adapted to after countless lives were lost. I don't think the modern medical industry would w…

the covid vaccine was not developed for profit, it was developed because the alternative was the literal end of the world as we know it. they'd been sitting on the tech for thirty years because it was not profitable, in fact https://www.salon.com/2021/01/24/the-hero-biochemist-who-pio... and now that it's finished it's immediately applicable to all kinds of diseases that currently and historically have generated mass…

While I agree with most of this comment (the covid vaccine is the result of the world working for the betterment of society, succeeding where the "profit" motivation has utterly failed), the idea that HIV, malaria, and cancer such have not been treated because they're not "profitable" to cure has always struck me as verging on conspiracy. The first company to produce a definitive cure would no doubt make billions in profit. The problem is specifically with mRNA vaccines: the cost of research into it was so high with little guaranteed payoff.

The problem was that the risk-reward calculation was showing that none of the money invested into mRNA vaccines had turned a profit yet, so despite the promise of the technology and the fact that medicine at large would greatly benefit from a single breakthrough vaccine, no single company was willing to put in the investment since they wouldn't reap the full rewards. IP incentivizes selfish behavior, not collective behavior.

Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

#35

Post by ncmncm » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 7:09 AM UTC

Lost me in the first paragraph.

There probably are legitimate arguments against IP (and patents and copyright are explicitly not property, anyway -- the whole field of law is dishonest to the core) but I know at the outset I won't find them here.

Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

#36

Post by ajuc » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 7:09 AM UTC

IP is designed to preserve the status quo - for rich countries to remain rich and for poor countries to remain poor.

That's why every country that successfully moved from poor to rich - did so by ignoring patents and other forms of IP.

Philosophical arguments make no difference, money talk. If you're poor you can't get rich without using other people's IP for free. So you will. If you're rich you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by supporting strict IP laws - so you will.

Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

#37

Post by suck-it-dang » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 7:15 AM UTC

dmitriid wrote: post #25

reissbaker wrote: post #7

medicine have been produced for ages without IP law Er... I think there's a fairly sizable difference between modern medicine, in which we can develop an effective cure for a pandemic within a year of the pandemic starting, and historical medicine in which the Black Death ravaged countries for years and was never cured, only adapted to after countless lives were lost. I don't think the modern medical industry would w…

> I think there's a fairly sizable difference between modern medicine, in which we can develop an effective cure for a pandemic within a year of the pandemic starting, and historical medicine Yes, there is a difference, and it's striking. For example, despite the pandemic the wealthy countries have voted overwhelmingly against waiving patents on the long-needed vaccine: https://www.msf.org/countries-obstructing-covid…

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Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

#38

Post by neonological » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 7:16 AM UTC

moonchild wrote: post #27

samatman wrote: post #6

The argument for patents is simple and clear: the alternative is broader use of trade secrets. In a patent regime, a company can (indeed must) publish their process, in exchange for a temporary monopoly on exploiting it commercially. In return, everyone else can learn it, implement it for research, and improve it, at which point the patent no longer applies. Copyright was also compelling in the technological milieu i…

> In a patent regime, a company can (indeed must) publish their process Must they? From what I have heard, a number of technologies have not been patented, simply because the potential liability from keeping it as a trade secret was less than the liability of the process being made public

What the OP said is completely incorrect. No idea or process must be published. You have the right to keep any idea a secret. However to patent the idea you must publish it.

Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

#39

Post by jayd16 » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 7:19 AM UTC

slver wrote: post #31

Nobody would invest billions in IP if someone from the street can walk by and take it.Is that such a complex subject to understand? IP is not a different concept than property. People like to say "you can't actually steal IP, you get to keep yours". Of course you can steal IP, by using it or redistributing it without compensating the creator, you reduce the value of their IP. You stole from them by taking part of the…

What you fail to understand is that investment in IP is not the goal, so saying it would no longer be invested in is non-convincing.

You have to actually prove that research would slow down but your hypothetical scenarios are not proof.

I can just as easily assert that investment and research would happen with or without temporary exclusive legal rights as. Market forces still push for improvement even without exclusivity.

Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

#40

Post by Silhouette » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 7:21 AM UTC

kbutler wrote: post #21

samatman wrote: post #6

The argument for patents is simple and clear: the alternative is broader use of trade secrets. In a patent regime, a company can (indeed must) publish their process, in exchange for a temporary monopoly on exploiting it commercially. In return, everyone else can learn it, implement it for research, and improve it, at which point the patent no longer applies. Copyright was also compelling in the technological milieu i…

> a company can (indeed must) publish their process...everyone else can learn it I used to find this compelling, then I found out that standard practice is to avoid reading patents, because 1) they're not written to instruct, but drafted to claim broad implications and exclude prior art, and 2) exposure to patented material increases liability if you are found to be infringing. Are there any examples of any inventor…

Having participated in the system as an inventor, I can confirm that this is unfortunately quite accurate. The patent lawyer was surprised that we sent a technical expert who actually understood the invention to explain it to them, and seemed to find it a welcome and refreshing change from their usual clients.

I really have read some other patents in the field. It turned out that some US universities like to patent maths before they publish it in papers or at conferences. I learned nothing new that the academic papers didn't already cover. The only result was that, fearful of committing wilful infringement, we avoided using anything resembling that entire area in any software associated with our invention. The lawyer advised me not to do that (read other patents) any more.