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0 pointsbreck4y ago0 comments

> Do you really think drug cartels need the IPTO?

The legal ones do, absolutely.

> Or that the opioid crisis couldn't possibly have happened if the opioids had been generics?

"get an audience for our patent infringement suits so that we are feared as a tiger with claws, teeth and balls, and build some excitement with prescribers that OxyContin Tablets is the way to go." Richard Sackler in a 1996 email. I do not see OxyContin situations in a world with intellectual freedom, no. No government enforced monopoly profits, no massive incentive to overprescribe and lie. No copyright, and you get far more honest media, education, and healthcare industries.

> Who has an IP monopoly on alcohol production? Is alcohol addition a huge problem, or not?

Maybe it's far more of a problem that is generally known, but that truth is not made apparent because we don't have true freedom of the press b/c of copyright laws.

> Why do you believe tech monopolies rely specifically on patents

On patents and copyrights. If we were to declare tomorrow that search engines did not have to respect copyright law, we would see far better search engines than Google in a year or less.

> The reality is that patents are a relatively tiny element in cost of entry to markets.

Patents deter a huge number of startups from forming. Nearly every successful startup I know of gets targetted by patent trolls, and must decide to play that game and go along with the system. This is very discouraging to a huge number of innovators, especially in critical fields like chip design.

> It's honestly baffling why the anti-copyright crowd believes removing patents and copyright will be some kind of magic bus ride to utopia, when there is no rational reason whatsoever to believe that.

Not a magical bus ride to utopia, but a doubling to perhaps 10x increase in human productivity and equality, yes.

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shagie4y ago

> On patents and copyrights. If we were to declare tomorrow that search engines did not have to respect copyright law, we would see far better search engines than Google in a year or less.

If copyright was abolished, the GPL and all open source would lose all its teeth.

The people who write books on here (and then have to fight to keep people from doing on demand pirating of them) would be given a big shrug when they try to go after them in court for copyright infringement.

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Its possible to argue about the term of the copyrights on different media or the threshold for what is novel for a patent... but trying to remove copyrights completely disincentives people who are creating material that is protected with copyright from sharing their material.

And let's face it... you'd have to rewrite the constitution to get rid of them. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8.

> [The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

And they're right.

TheDong4y ago

> The people who write books on here (and then have to fight to keep people from doing on demand pirating of them) would be given a big shrug when they try to go after them in court for copyright infringement

Do any authors of books actually manage to prosecute piracy in a way that makes them money? As best I can tell, artists lose money paying for lawyers to litigate supposedly lost sales, but whether they actually lose sales is very questionable.

Yup, which is good! You put them up on the web without expectation of making a dime, right? Cool. Your expectations are fulfilled, and someone gets a cool image too.

> trying to remove copyrights completely disincentives people who are creating material that is protected with copyright from sharing their material

And yet, the majority of people who post instagram images and tik-tok videos don't even realize their work is protected by copyright I'd wager, but they're still happy to share their material.

People who write open source code apply such a license specifically because they want to share the material more broadly than copyright would normally allow.

If removing copyright means that we end up with fewer people who are seeking a profit producing content and then praying on others who share and remix it, that seems good to me. We have plenty of people who are willing to produce content and be happy when other people enjoy it, use it, and share it.

If I wrote a book, I would be overjoyed to have people read it and copy it to share with their friends. It seems like a very dark mindset to think that a profit-motive is the primary reason someone might produce anything.

jazzyjackson4y ago

As much as I disagree with the notion of intellectual property, I think arguing about the meaning of the phrase "securing for limited times" is the strongest ticket we have, thanks for the tip.

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