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Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

locusmag.com

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Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#141

Post by breck »

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…

After a few years in medical research I learned a shocking truth: patents in medicine are killing more people than they are save. It’s an absolute disaster. Big pharma splintering into thousands of smaller players would be a huge improvement.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#143

Post by konjin »

coldtea wrote: post #98
konjin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a screen reader already. It is sad that you're so selfish that you can't imagine minorities would be willing to give up quality of life to improve it for the majority.

> It is sad that you're so selfish Is that how you've been taught to discuss? With ad-hominens, absolute self-certainty on your prioritizations, and pop psychology attacks?

A discussion is impossible when one side assumes the other is arguing in bad faith. You started from the assumption I need sight to navigate and when I pointed out I don't you doubled down on sanctimoniousness.

Again: why should the needs of the few trump the needs of the many?

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#144

Post by Kalium »

SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #7

"There is no way for us to defend ourselves: even skilled technologists who administer their own networked services are no match for the bandits. To keep bandits out, you have to be perfect and perfectly vigilant, and never make a single mistake. For the bandits to get you, they need merely find a single mistake that you’ve made." Ooof. What a boot-to-the-face reminder. Despite my use of a Tor Router, three ubikeys a…

Information security is not a matter of secure or not-secure. Throughout history, it has always been a matter of available resources and risk management.

Failing to consider security in terms of resources and risk leads to moments like this. The crushing fear that you're not doing enough, never doing enough, never sure enough...

It's a bottomless pit of anxiety. You can always add on more protections, more tools, and more layers. Your anxiety is never really soothed because you can never actually fully banish risk.

As long as you conceive of information security as deterministic or binary, you're going to struggle.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#145

Post by renewiltord »

f430 wrote: post #3

What really puzzles me about Apple fans and it's userbase is that they do not care . They simply do not care at all what's being done to them. It's the strongest example of consumer cultism. Absolute in their exceptionalism and ignorance. Similar problems discussed in the article are found in Tesla. The lowest common denominator of consumer cultism is surveillance and it's no surprise that both Apple and Tesla do exc…

Wait, you'll pay me $50 (just under today's Brent crude) for a list of everything I downloaded and ran (what Apple gets)? I'll maybe even throw in all the names of the `a.out` that I create for no reason.

Sure, what the hell. It's a deal, email me and I'll run:

    find ~/Downloads -type f -executable
On video for you.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#146

Post by konjin »

Interesting take but it's missing the other part of feudalism: the Catholic Church.

Today we don't have one monolithic church but we do have a very large number of priests who can excommunicate you over nothing at all. The larger outside of the centres of powers you get the juicer target for these people you get.

This has gotten so bad the Linus of Linux fame has to have a literal guard around him at all times as to not be accused of rape: https://www.theregister.com/2015/11/06/linus_torvalds_target...

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#148

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

"As with Apple, the best way for Google to avoid being ordered to turn over data on its users is to not collect or retain that data in the first place. And, as with Apple, the next best thing is to give users the power to turn off that data-collection and data-retention altogether, something Google's gotten marginally better at in the past year."

Google is very aggressive in its data collection. Its scope keeps increasing not vice versa. For example, I have been experimenting with blocking some of YouTube's data collection using a forward proxy to deny certain request URLs. It appears one could do this within Developer Tools using request blocking and regex. But who would ever use that. Is it any coincidence this is not named "User Tools".

It is possible to watch YouTube videos without having every interaction with the website logged and collected by Google as "data". You will not see any ads if you do not use the Google-supplied Javascript video player. However avoiding data collection takes some effort on the part of the user. Tech companies know this, they know most people are not really "into computers" and cannot be bothered to spend time fiddling with them. We cannot expect Google to make avoiding data collection "easy" for anyone. This is no different from expecting tech companies to "self-regulate".

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#149

Post by ardy42 »

mordae wrote: post #126
ardy42 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The lack of a monopoly creates competition which accelerates innovation and leads to cheaper, higher quality products for the consumer. The person who invents a product should simply be one competitor in the market, they can have the first mover advantage, but shouldn't be allowed to control the market entirely. But that obviously wouldn't as work well, because: 1. The inventor would pay the R&D costs with no good…

> 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. So what? They would just need to sell the research at profit instead of subsidizing it with future monopoly revenue. Patents are nowadays written to obscure the research as much…

>> 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.

>> 2. There'd be no incentive for inventors to actually publish designs for their inventions. Most people who argue against patents as a concept forget is that to get one you have to publish plans for your idea openly, which makes it much easier to copy. The limited monopoly is an incentive to part with that information. You'd end up leaving the public domain poorer.

> So what? They would just need to sell the research at profit instead of subsidizing it with future monopoly revenue.

That doesn't actually address the concern; it just moves it around a little.

So, there's at least two cases to consider: something that was difficult to develop and either a) easy to reverse engineer or b) hard to reverse engineer.

With (a), why would someone pay for the research when it's just going to be cloned by their competitors for free? It's the same situation the inventor is in.

With (b), why would the inventor ever publicize the research behind the invention or product? It'd end up being a trade secret, and probably be monopolized (for potential a longer period) or lost altogether.

For instance, with 3D printers, maybe instead of them becoming ubiquitous after the patent expiration, the inventor kept the technology secret and used to start a rapid prototyping company. Maybe they couldn't keep that up forever, but it's quite conceivable they could for longer than a patent term.

> And remember how putting a 3D printer in a box to keep the material warm has been patented? Suuuure, wouldn't get discovered independently.

That's not an argument against patents, but an argument against the current threshold of patentability. Also, there are a lot of things that only seem obvious after you've seen them done.

Re: Neofeudalism and the Digital Manor

#150

Post by ardy42 »

krapp wrote: post #110
ardy42 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The lack of a monopoly creates competition which accelerates innovation and leads to cheaper, higher quality products for the consumer. The person who invents a product should simply be one competitor in the market, they can have the first mover advantage, but shouldn't be allowed to control the market entirely. But that obviously wouldn't as work well, because: 1. The inventor would pay the R&D costs with no good…

Maybe, instead of an exclusive monopoly, ownership of IP grants an inventor a share of revenue from any products using that IP for a limited time, like a royalty or a license. Then they could make money while the community innovates on their idea.

> Maybe, instead of an exclusive monopoly, ownership of IP grants an inventor a share of revenue from any products using that IP for a limited time, like a royalty or a license. Then they could make money while the community innovates on their idea.

I think that's a reasonable idea, and I believe it's called "compulsory licensing."

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