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There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)

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

#41

Post by wiz21c »

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…

> Nobody would invest billions in IP if someone from the street can walk by and take it.

Gross simplification. The simple fact you reason and write about this question is a direct consuequence of the free availability of IP to you : you learned to write, to compute, to think with books and a free incredibly huge flow of ideas.

You're basically seeing intellectual production as a thing that should be monetized. Most of IP is free fortunately.

> Plus IP expires.

Unless armies of legal teams make sure it doesn't.

I'm always surprised by the fact that many people advocate for free competing markets. But if you remove IP, then it's totally free competition : nobody gets the protection of IP, all players are on the same page. Then all of sudden "investors" don't want to invest anymore because there's not protection. Either those are not very brave, either they're not interested in making the world a better plus but rather interested in winning money because, hey we had a great idea, we _deserve_ to profit on it...

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

#44

Post by Gehinnn »

The approval of a patent registration request should work like this:

The issuer provides a public description of the problem the patent solves and a secret description of the solution. They pay $10k in advance to request a patent registration.

The patent institution then publishes the public problem description. External challengers can submit additional solutions for $100. After some time (e.g. a month) submission closes and independent judges need to identify the solution proposed by the patent issuer out of all submitted solutions. If they succeed, the patent will be registered. Otherwise, the submitter of the identified solution gets a split of the patent registration fee (e.g. $2k) and registration is denied.

The institution manages hundreds of possible judges, only a few are selected randomly by a trusted computer. If a selected judge correctly identifies the solution of the patent, they will get a bonus (more than challengers would get, e.g. $3k). Non-selected judges can submit challenging solutions.

This should be robust against bribery and prevent low effort bullshit patents!?

If a company wants to bribe judges, they need to identify the selected judges, otherwise they help not-selected judges to submit challenging solutions. This can be made very hard.

Also, the solution of the patent should solve a hard problem (i.e. a problem that is hard to find solutions for). Otherwise, challengers can easily come up with solutions of equivalent quality.

If the problem is "A mechanism to visually indicate progress", it should not be too hard to come up with the progress bar.

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

#45

Post by slver »

jayd16 wrote: post #39
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 exclus…

Research the origins of IP. IP didn't exist forever. It was introduced because it was needed.

If you think this is subjective, let me ask you think: you have a popular YouTube channel, your content requires paying writers, actors, VFX teams and editors. Bunch of other people copy your content freely and legally and get most of the ad revenue.

You protest: you made this content, you paid for it. Please just link to me, not the copycats. Response "we can just as easily assert that you'd continue making videos anyway with or without other people copying you."

Kind of tonedeaf isn't it?

Look, eventually all our jobs will be producing IP. We'll have IP schematics to prints 3D printers which prints other 3D printers, which print robots which do all the work. I'm simplifying but basically that's the future of jobs. No one cares about your muscles, they only care about your brain. So, to say IP deserves no rights in the long-term means basically no one has jobs, and we have no economy.

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

#46

Post by cturner »

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…

“Of course you can steal ip ... you reduce the value of their ip”. This is a circular argument, and invalid. Then default state is for ip to have no value. The only thing that gives it value is far-reaching laws that diminish the real property rights of anyone who owns a pen or hard disk. The existence of those laws cannot be an argument in favour of those laws.

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

#47

Post by neonological »

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…

Many IPs likely wouldn't even exist if the 10 year monopoly didn't exist.

Yeah they patented some parts of DNA and there was a huge debate over it but that patent is almost expired now so the whole debate eventually becomes irrelevant.

It's worth it.

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

#48

Post by slver »

cturner wrote: post #46
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…

“Of course you can steal ip ... you reduce the value of their ip”. This is a circular argument, and invalid. Then default state is for ip to have no value. The only thing that gives it value is far-reaching laws that diminish the real property rights of anyone who owns a pen or hard disk. The existence of those laws cannot be an argument in favour of those laws.

By that same logic, why have property rights at all?

You invest to produce IP, to you this still results in "IP has no value by default".

So I guess investing to buy a house, also results in "this house has no value by default" by that same logic.

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

#49

Post by pasabagi »

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…

> Nobody would invest billions in IP if someone from the street can walk by and take it.

That's called a university. Such institutions are responsible for the vast majority of technical advances.

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

#50

Post by staticassertion »

Gehinnn wrote: post #44

The approval of a patent registration request should work like this: The issuer provides a public description of the problem the patent solves and a secret description of the solution. They pay $10k in advance to request a patent registration. The patent institution then publishes the public problem description. External challengers can submit additional solutions for $100. After some time (e.g. a month) submission c…

> They pay like $10k to test their patent.

Cool, so patents are (even more so) for rich people exclusively. Also, what you're describing soudns a lot like the existing system to me, but with more upfront money.

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