Hey mateys!
I made a post at /c/libertarianism about the abolition of IP. Maybe some of you will find it interesting.
Please answer in the other community so that all the knowledge is in one place and easier to discover.
It holds back innovation
How so? I agree with you that this measure will fundamentally change the reasons for innovation. Innovation itself will no longer be lucrative because you cannot be sure that you will be rewarded for your research.
In my opinion, it will rather arise from the urge to deliver a better end product with which one can differentiate oneself from the competition for some time. Or out of a thirst for knowledge that is fuelled by the fact that all knowledge is openly accessible. Or from the sense of community that comes from working together on a project to improve one’s own skill and improve the circumstances for all.
None of those motivations you listed actually need IP to be abolished though.
If you’re trying to differentiate yourself from the competitors, having IP protection is jn your favor. The large corporation you’re competing with can’t just swoop in and destroy you by making an identical product at a such a loss of profit until you run out of money.
If you’re fueled by creating open source knowledge, well you can already do that. You can choose to release your IP into the world for anyone to use unrestricted.
And for a sense of community, well that’s just the second point again. Abolishing IP was never going to make you feel community with Amazon. But having IP isn’t preventing you from having community with individuals. You can still work on a project together without abandoning the idea of IP ownership.
But why do we need it then anyways? It is a kind of paternalism of the people and a restriction of their freedom. The argument that IP should protect small businesses from big bad businesses is, in my opinion, inaccurate. It’s the big companies that sit on their patents or hoard their licences and make a fortune.
Because those big businesses are only motivated by the profit possibilities.
If you take away that protection then they’ll just stop trying. They don’t give a shit about any of the motivations you listed. They’ll wait for you to come up with something new, then use the advantage of their size to force you out of the market. You’ll end up either giving up or trying again at which point they’ll just repeat the cycle.
And there’s nothing you can do to stop them because now they can be as open and blatant as they want with directly using your exact plans.
Just copy their work then. See? No more Nintendo compaints…
And you’re going to compete with them on price then? Even when they can and will sell every unit at a loss until you’re driven out of the market. Unless you’re wealthy enough to be part of the good ol boys club, you can’t afford to play that kind of game. They can.
No, not on price, on orginality. On the stories you can tell about the creation of your product. If everything around you gets automated, created by AI, copied by big corpos and soulless copycats you will have the choice: Cheap and uninteresting or maybe a bit more expensive but with a personal connection. It’s your decision to choose.
Hear me out: what if, instead of wait for systemic change, we go for it and license all our works permissively?
No major copyright issues, attribution given, new developers and artists get to study the works, and use it in many ways, as per the licence.
That would be a great first step and this is exactly why I have initiated this discussion. It helps me to align my behaviour with what I personally consider to be optimal and then act accordingly. Everything I create to improve my situation I also want to share with the world.
And as a fun fact: without IP there is no need for copyleft or open source licenses because theoretically you can reverse engineer everything. But that doesn’t make the open source community obsolete. There will still be a distinction between people who openly share their source and solution and those who try to hide it from everyone.
If there was no intellectual property, what would prevent a company like Amazon to simply sell any work every published in their best monopoly marketplace without ever giving a cent to the creators? How would, for instance, the author if a novel make money?
That’s not far off from what Amazon currently does.
Donations and crowdfunds are the most common suggestions.
Or to come at it from another angle - 38% of the USA’s GDP comes from IP, and its primary beneficiaries are wealthy. If we paid towards a UBI instead of copyright holders, then many people would just make these things for free, with total creative freedom. The messages in our art and direction of our technology would radically change.
This is the decision of the consumers. If we as a society do not want the big corporations to become too powerful, we should not give them any money. Most people will have to learn the hard way when their own ideas are sold cheaper elsewhere until they understand that it is better to support the original and the actual creator. But anything else is pure paternalism, which I cannot support. I am of course aware that there will always be people who will take advantage of this situation. But everyone must decide for themselves whether it is worth it. Otherwise, the product may no longer exist.
As I said: In a free market, supply can be determined by demand. So if most people stopped ordering shit on amazon every day, we wouldn’t be where we are now. First of all, everyone can take a look at their own nose and not blame everything on daddy state. As if that would help you in any way.
So you’re just going to ignore reality in favor of what you think “should” be happening.
If someone like you was in charge, we’d swiftly find ourselves living in company towns and working 18 hour days on assembly lines, only to be swiftly culled the instant some form of automation made us redundant.
You say you’re aware that there will always be people to take advantage of a situation where there is absolutely no protections for the consumer, but you are woefully ignorant of the scale to which advantage would be taken.
As a libertarian, I don’t want anyone to decide about anyone. And that’s the line I’m working towards, refining and testing in discussions like this one. But I see that you are definitely a greater realist, because you know from the beginning what the right way is.
We already know what happens when regulations are eased. People die, profits soar, workers are abused. It isn’t some philosophical theory, it’s what happens. It’s what has always happened throughout history.
That’s why there are regulations in the first place. Because horrible things kept happening to people and we collectively decided that it would be better if that didn’t continue. Shitty things happened and as a result, regulations were put into place. That’s what happened and that’s the reality we live in. To suggest otherwise is to live in a fantasy land.
Just like today: People die, profits soar, workers are exploited. IP won’t chamge anything aslong as we the people don’t change. Regulations are mostly favour the rich as they can afford to find loopholes in them, the weak must suffer under them.
So your answer will result in creators having to compete with people who dont create, but market better. This will discourage creators and the result will be less non corporate content will be created for us, everything will be bland crap made for mass consumption.
Then you can start doing meaningful stuff for yourself, your friends, interested people who are willing to pay for the orginality and not some soulless copycat.
The one with more money will most likely win. They have better marketing, lawers, and ereryting else to outcompete every upcoming buissnes. The moment the small competetor has a real chnce they wave with enough money to make you quit. And why wouldn’t you? You work for moneyafter all. How can you determine the actuall demand if you don’t have the numbers with no way to get them?
There is no free market and there has never been one.
And that is exactly what is happening today. Do you think IP is not exploited by the big rich companies in such a way that it helps them? A small author won’t have the same opportunities as a big publisher, who will exploit him to the hilt. But the problem is that now the publisher gets the lion’s share of the licensing costs for the duration of the IP licence and the author can’t sell it anywhere else because he is bound.
What would prevent us from copying their stuff? They copy ours we copy theirs. We copy and distribute verything and in the end all are happy lol
Abolishing IP is all fun until you decide to be a producer, innovator, or creator. Hope you can pay for your groceries with likes and thumbs ups.
In your world where companies have more power than the consumer, yes that would be worse. But what if abolishing IP just changes this? What if the consumers will be able to copy anything the big corpos made? What if we learn to build strong and resilient communities?
