I wonder how the author would feel about me copying & pasting their article to a few different websites (such as Medium.com), and then collecting both the financial proceeds & the credit.
[deleted]
There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)
81–90 of 106 posts
Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. I didn't give an argument in favor of YouTube protecting IP rights. 2. No that argument is still silly. It does not work for the same reason: it assumes no agency on part of economic actors. The only way your hypothetical "NotYouTube" could stay in business vs. YouTube is by adding enough value that they actually get ad revenue. If people decide to advertise on "NotYouTube", to the extent that it is profitable to…
> The only way your hypothetical "NotYouTube" could stay in business vs. YouTube is by adding enough value that they actually get ad revenue. Well, they have the same content as YouTube for starters. So all they need is a slightly sexier or faster app, and they're done. > "NotYouTube" will have the exact same incentive to motivate content creators by sharing part of their ad revenue with them. "NotYouTube" doesn't ha…
> So all they need is a slightly sexier or faster app, and they're done.
YouTube is not just an app, it's a network that can distribute content along the lines of "200 million videos watched, 65k new videos uploaded per day", it's also the people who moderate it, it's also the people who market it, uptime and reliability, etc. And you'd have to beat YouTube on every single one of these to get at even a substantial fragment of those precious ad dollars.
Notice that your hypothetical "NotYouTube" does not have _any_ advantage over actual-YouTube in a world without IP. It's in the business of connecting advertisers to potential customers, just like YouTube, and to be able to do that, they need content that people watch. And hence, it has an incentive to support the creation of such content. Especially so if it becomes the market leader (by having a slightly sexier app, or larger reach, or less obtrusive ads, or better recommendations, or a nicer privacy policy, some other appeal^1): with that advantage, more people will watch the new content on their website than elsewhere, so it will be able to get more ad revenue from hosting it than its competitors.
There might be
> You really need to think through the entire chain of events that'll unfold if we had no IP rights.
Agreed. We should be especially careful not to: 1. assume that Econ 101 would also cease to apply, and that anyone would be able to make money by spinning up YouTube clones. If your dystopian vision was correct, Wikipedia would have been outcompeted by one of its ad-supported mirrors long ago.
^1 Note: All of these are QoL improvements for the users of the services. As long as there are many more content consumers than content creators (and there is overlap between the two categories), this may constitute a further argument against IP rights.
Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The only way your hypothetical "NotYouTube" could stay in business vs. YouTube is by adding enough value that they actually get ad revenue. Well, they have the same content as YouTube for starters. So all they need is a slightly sexier or faster app, and they're done. > "NotYouTube" will have the exact same incentive to motivate content creators by sharing part of their ad revenue with them. "NotYouTube" doesn't ha…
> So all they need is a slightly sexier or faster app, and they're done. YouTube is not just an app, it's a network that can distribute content along the lines of "200 million videos watched, 65k new videos uploaded per day", it's also the people who moderate it, it's also the people who market it, uptime and reliability, etc. And you'd have to beat YouTube on every single one of these to get at even a substantial fr…
[deleted]
Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The only way your hypothetical "NotYouTube" could stay in business vs. YouTube is by adding enough value that they actually get ad revenue. Well, they have the same content as YouTube for starters. So all they need is a slightly sexier or faster app, and they're done. > "NotYouTube" will have the exact same incentive to motivate content creators by sharing part of their ad revenue with them. "NotYouTube" doesn't ha…
> So all they need is a slightly sexier or faster app, and they're done. YouTube is not just an app, it's a network that can distribute content along the lines of "200 million videos watched, 65k new videos uploaded per day", it's also the people who moderate it, it's also the people who market it, uptime and reliability, etc. And you'd have to beat YouTube on every single one of these to get at even a substantial fr…
You keep saying they need original content people can watch. I don't know how many times I can explain the notion of "original content" loses meaning without IP rights.
Original content is an incentive because only the producer can host it. That's enforced by RIGHTS.
Without rights, if YouTube produces it, it ends up on NotYouTube. If NotYouTube produces, it ends up on YouTube. No rights, no original content. There's no incentive. You keep saying the incentive is so people go to the site to watch a particular video. But nothing keeps that video on that one site. IP rights do that currently.
If what you say is right, how far has ThePirateBay gone to produce original content? Oh that's right, they just take Hollywood content and ads flow just fine. That's the future you're fighting for.
Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
What I said is completely correct, if you read the entire sentence: to obtain an exclusive monopoly, you must patent, which requires publication.
No what you said is completely wrong. Publication is not required for an exclusive monopoly it is only required for a patent.
There are many many monopolies and oligopolies over products that are enforced without patents or use of intellectual property laws.
Oil was an example of a oligopoly enforced by geography. OPEC.
The f35 is a publicly and internationally distributed product for which a monopoly by lockheed is obtained by unparalleled and uncopyable technical aptitude crystallized into the product itself. This as well as astronomically high costs, and trade secrets help make sure very few entities can copy the product.
The only incentive for highly complex products to exhist in the market place is the ability to monopolize the product to a certain extent. What is the point of selling the product if anyone can make it?
The point is that there are barriers of entry that every business uses to stay relevant. A patent is simply one barrier in a toolset of economic barriers.
Make no mistake, the monopoly google holds over search has fundamentally the same economic effect as a patent. Same with monopolies held by facebook, uber and apple all held without patents.
Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's full of empty houses and free land over the entire country. If I live alone in a big house with 5 rooms, I could host at least 10-15 people there. They would surely rather live in that nice house, and not on the street. What causes that scarcity that I live alone in a big house, while homeless people roam the streets? Property rights. Property rights cause scarcity way before "natural scarcity" kicks in. To thin…
"If I live alone in a big house with 5 rooms, I could host at least 10-15 people there. They would surely rather live in that nice house, and not on the street." Would it still be a nice house if 10-15 people with no kinship were crammed into it? We can see from the way that people chose to spend and live that most people regard privacy as important to their idea of home. "What causes that scarcity that I live alone…
> Would it still be a nice house if 10-15 people with no kinship were crammed into it?
You're currently arguing in favor of artificial scarcity through property rights. Are you sure that's your thesis. /s
> No, scarcity is inherent, as explained earlier.
There's nothing "inherent" in having the right to keep those 10-15 people away from your nice house.
I think you're so used to having the right of property, you can't even realize none of this is inherent. Rights, laws and law enforcement gave you that.
Without this artificial scarcity, there would be zero homeless people. And there would also be zero people owning houses.
But I'm sure nice houses will just keep being built anyway. /s
> At the start of the thread, you were using the language of real property to argue for IP. But here, you reveal that you are in fact opposed to real property.
I'm not opposed to real property at all. I'm just showing you what a world without property rights looks like. You seem to not like it. QED.
Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So all they need is a slightly sexier or faster app, and they're done. YouTube is not just an app, it's a network that can distribute content along the lines of "200 million videos watched, 65k new videos uploaded per day", it's also the people who moderate it, it's also the people who market it, uptime and reliability, etc. And you'd have to beat YouTube on every single one of these to get at even a substantial fr…
You keep saying they need original content people can watch. I don't know how many times I can explain the notion of "original content" loses meaning without IP rights. Original content is an incentive because only the producer can host it. That's enforced by RIGHTS. Without rights, if YouTube produces it, it ends up on NotYouTube. If NotYouTube produces, it ends up on YouTube. No rights, no original content. There's…
> You keep saying the incentive is so people go to the site to watch a particular video. But nothing keeps that video on that one site.
No, that's not what I'm saying, and I don't know what gave you that idea. The phrase "original content" never even appeared in my comments!
People visit to online video platforms to watch videos. If there are no interesting videos, people don't visit online video platforms: they go and do something else with their time. And if people don't visit your online video platform, operators of online video platforms lose money, and go out of business. Consequently, operators of online video platforms have an incentive to ensure that interesting videos get made. This is true even when all videos are available on all the platforms. Same principle: one of my siblings operates a rural hotel, and regularly contributes to a fund promoting tourism in the region. Doing this is a net positive for her revenue, even though some (most!) of the tourists will not stay in that specific hotel when they visit the region, and some might stay in hotels that did not contribute to any such fund.
> If what you say is right, how far has ThePirateBay gone to produce original content?
TPB has to operate illegally, has an order of magnitude fewer visitors, and two orders of magnitude smaller revenue. They are not in the position to fund substantial original content, and those who accepted their money would risk prosecution. Despite all of that, TPB did fund a limited number of art projects in the past [1].
> Oh that's right, they just take Hollywood content and ads flow just fine. That's the future you're fighting for.
Heartbreaking injustice. No comment.
Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
?
Once you have eaten an apple, it cannot be eaten again. If you plant a crop of wheat on your field this season, your brother cannot also plant a crop of barley there. When you ride your bicycle to work for the day, your neighbour cannot ride the same bicycle to the gym at midday. The quality of scarceness does not come from law, it is inherent. Through owning your house, you get to decide what goes on there and have…
Its not the listener who we serve with intellectual property, its the creator. Of course the listener loses no value, because they in fact do not own the intellectual property, they possess the ability to benefit from it.
If there is no protection for intellectual property, its not the listener who loses utility, its the owner of the intellectual property who would like to be rewarded for his work.
Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)
#89There are many things that bear little sense in the absolute, but are a pillar of the world we live in. IP rights are one of them. The part that strikes me the most is the following: "proponents of IP say that without it we wouldn't have movies and medicine, but we had both for centuries without IP". That's just false. True, we had art in the Past, but it was a different time: in the Middle Age everything was the Kin…
"Same goes for medicine, that by the way never reached any meaningful scale before science, IP and capitalism came along." How did the Oxford/Astrazeneca vaccine come about, and at the low price that it did? By Fiscal Activism by the UK government. That's how basic science, research and development comes about - by government fiscal activism making the results freely available. Once that breaches a risk threshold the…
I think we can still have intellectual property rights even in this context. Some things are worth working on at a national level, like the vaccine, but that doesn't have to be an argument in abolishing all IP rights. We don't have to nationalize pop music for instance, heck it doesn't even make sense to do this.
Re: There Are No Good Arguments for Intellectual Property (2010)
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 o…
So, people will dump in the billions of dollars of investment developing drugs and getting them past human trials, only to have them immediately be stolen? Removal of IP here means that you've enforced a penalty against innovators and creators, and baked incentives for grifting and leeching straight into the system. The system we have right now is flawed, but the remove all IP argument is even worse. I'll also pre-em…
The flaw with this argument is the assumption that incentives cannot exist towards innovation without IP protections. It's obvious why investors will seldomly invest in non-protected innovation: monopolies are just significantly more lucrative. Absent that incentive, are there no truly no alternatives? Was this assumption ever tested prior to these policies being implemented?
I think it's also worth asking why the available funding for innovation is almost exclusively in the hands of capitalists in the first place. Do they simply have superior business acumen, or are there protections / rent-seeking behaviors at play here?