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My comments stem from broader work I’ve been ruminating on, which doesn’t yet exist in a form I can readily share here. I’m not advocating for the abolition of IP alone, there needs to be an appropriate and battle hardened replacement to fill the void. This is part of my attempt to help extract it from my head.
The entire notion of ‘Intellectual Property’ is a cancer on society.
Intellectual property is a term that wraps a whole bunch of things (copyright, trademarks, patents). Are you fully aware of the impact how abolishing all IP would negative affect society?
I’m well aware of the scope my comments cover, and I stand by them.
Copyright prevents the KKK from producing and selling Pokemon cartoons with Pikachu supporting stupid shit like white supremecy propaganda. Are you sure you want that protection gone?
I’m fascinated as to the justification in relying on copyright to prevent hate speech, or enforce other morality constraints. This example is just another case of using the wrong tool for the job.
Information and ideas intrinsically accrue value the more they’re known and used, and the incentives provided around their collation and attribution should embody that, not punish them with imaginary locks that provide ownership.
Let’s just take the patents portion of IP for a moment. The first part of what you’re asking for here is exactly what patents do. To have something patented, the patent holder has to fully document the machine/process/method to create the patented item. This is that mechnism that enables the “more known and used”. Society gains this knowledge because the owner fully shares it.
I agree this is a stated claim of patent systems, and it’s a concept that should stand. My argument is that the incentives are problematic. By conjuring gaol cells and granting exclusive ownership over an idea, it rewards restrictive, exclusionary and extractive behaviours.
My counter proposal is to create a replacement system which intrinsically rewards open, sharing, and collaborative actions.
A design patent can last for only 14 or 15 years (depending on filing date). The longest type of patent (Utility) lasts only 20 years. After as few as 14 years everyone can use this knowledge without any fees/restrictions/payments.
A key distinction between the current and my proposed systems is reframing the designation of ‘ownership’ as ‘attribution’. A reason for this is ownership invokes a right to restriction, whereas attribution serves as the provision of recognition.
The restrictions facilitated by patents are entirely imaginary, and cause unnecessary harm the entire span of their enforcement.
This is a be-careful-what-you-wish for situation with what you’re asking for here. There are companies choosing NOT to file patents anymore and simply keep their methods secret. Since they methods aren’t patented they are under no obligation to ever share them publicly. There is a very real chance that many of these technologies/methods may be unknown to society at large for long after the term of normal patent protection would have expired and society would have been able to use the knowledge.
How is an example of the patent system being insufficient to incentivise someone to engage with it a defence of the patent system?
Further, an element of my proposal is pseudonymous and anonymous submission. If an idea exists, but has not been published, and doing so could be dangerous if traced back to the author, it provides a mechanism for it to be made available to and for society.
EDIT: I was trying to think of a good example of a company that agrees with your stance about not patenting and I remembered one. Elon Musk is choosing not to patent SpaceX rocket engines because it would force him to document how they work. Instead they are just keeping the designs secret. So your desire to not have patents used are advocating for what Elon Musk does.
Not all sociopaths are billionaires, but all billionaires are sociopaths, and should be euthanised through taxation. Anonymous submission could be a pathway for a privileged altruistic entity to make the concept more broadly available, which would create an incentive for a ‘Musk’ to engage with the system earlier and more frequently.
