- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter (now X) and Square (now Block), sparked a weekend’s worth of debate around intellectual property, patents, and copyright, with a characteristically terse post declaring, “delete all IP law.”
X’s current owner Elon Musk quickly replied, “I agree.”
I hate agreeing with these assholes, but I do in this case. IP/patent law is explicitly designed to stifle competition. At most, it should last a few years (if you agree with the “recoup the cost of innovation” argument). Innovation will be done for the sake of innovation if there’s competition though. If your opposition innovates and you don’t, you’re going to be destroyed. The exception is when they agree to not compete, which is already illegal though not enforced as strongly as it should be.
Right? There’s no reason Superman and Winnie The Pooh should fall under ANY copyright, everyone involved with the creation of both ins long dead… The only thing being protected is DC and Disney’s bottom line.
And the fact that Tarzan isn’t public domain is most absurd
Hell it took forever for Sherlock Holmes to be public domain, and the world he was created in doesn’t even remotely exist anymore.
IIRC the original US copyright law as written by the founders was 25 years or so. The extensions on that have all been in the last 70 years or so due to mega corps like Disney.
The problem with Musk and Dorsey is that they want the copyright laws to apply to them but no one else. “Rules for thee but not for me” mentality of the wealthy.
Yeah, the problem was not the original copyright law which gave incentive for coming up with new ideas by giving you rights to that idea for long enough that you can be profitable, the problem is that it’s been extended to the point that the people who came up with the idea are long dead and it’s still under copyright for massive corporations.
I guarantee you that neither of these assholes champion any kind of open access to their end works. Elon famously shut down the Twitter API and vexatiously litigated any number of Tesla copycats. Dorsey is only plugging an anti-IP stance because he’s got a new AI engine out and wants to get on board the “Stealing everyone’s DeviantArt library” gravy train. None of it is remotely sincere.
That’s simply not true. There are a myriad of historical examples as to it not being true, from the Japanese abolition of the gun during the Meiji Restoration to German telecoms clinging to copper wire data infrastructure despite fiber optics being obviously superior. If you don’t innovate because you have an economic incentive to drag your heels, and your economic clout gives you the ability to close out competitors, then you can do perfectly fine “innovating” in the field of anti-competitive trade behavior rather than real tech innovation.
What we have in Musk and Dorsey are two men who have benefited enormously from Silicon Valley insider investing and cheap borrowing. They don’t give a shit about other people’s IP in the same way Microsoft was more than happy to pillage code and reverse engineer software of its rivals. But if you think they’re going to apply that to their own codebase and personal economic interests… well…
Cool word
This is going to be used corporations to take away everything from individuals who are innovating (more than they already are). Nobody will be able to build wealth off a good idea again. Which if we were in a society where wealth wasn’t required to live a good life I would be okay with, but we aren’t, so I’m not.
Maybe. That’s certainly their intent. I could also see it working the other way though. No more patent trolls or companies hoarding good ideas.
The corporations wouldn’t just hold good ideas under this proposal, they would hold every idea.
Someone innovates and makes a good product? Looks like WalMart is going to produce 100,000 units and sell them at 75% of the innovator’s price, pushing him out.
No matter what, under capitalism, money ALWAYS wins.
Yea, it is a complicated issue, but at least the current way offers the little guys some protection. I’ve posted everything I’ve ever made (not that any of it was all that impressive) freely so it doesn’t really matter to me but for some people it may.