Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk would like to ‘delete all IP law’ | TechCrunch

"Noooo, not like that!"

This is why it's a mixed bag for me. IP law is kinda important in a capitalist system, which, for better or worse, that's what we have. If someone comes up with a wonder drug that outright cures addiction or something, you'd want that person to be able to recoup their costs before a bigger organization with more capital swoops in and undercuts them on production costs until they're the sole supplier of the drug. The hepatitis C cure drug selling for $70,000 is a great example of this quandary; there's millions of dollars worth of research and clinical trials that went into developing the drug, you'd want the company to be able to recuperate the costs of developing it or else there's less incentive to do something similar for other diseases down the line. Also, though, $70,000 or go fucking die is an outrageous statement.

Of course, what we have for IP law in practice is a bastardized monster, where corporations exploit the fuck out of it to have monopoly control over important products like insulins and life-saving medications that cost cents to produce and allow them to sell for hundreds a dose. That's not the intent of IP law, IMO, and that doesn't really serve anyone.

Lol we all know trump would put pharmaceuticals on the exemption list.

Nonono, see, they will have punitive contracts with employees that will nail them to the wall if they leak source code.

They like rules as long as they’re the one writing them.

That's what would happen if copyright doesn't exist. If a company releases something, it's immediately public domain, because no law protects it.

GPL

The GPL is very much not the public domain.

So basically the bluesky source code is now public domain?

I suspect that isn't the picture these two have in mind. It's going to be the same as Musk's demand for free speech, which just turns out to mean "let me be an asshole and you're not allowed to complain." This one is going to be "I get to profit off your ideas, but you're not allowed to use mine."

This is a horrible idea. Why would an author dedicate years of their life to a book only to make no money off of it. Why would I spend time and money prototyping a new invention only to not see a dime from it as a big company steals my idea.

People need to eat and live. If you can't survive by creating, you do something else instead of creating. How can people not see this very simple concept?

You could literally write the next Lord of the Rings and another company could print and sell the book, sell merch, and make a movie about it and you'd see 0 money. But no one would make movies any more because what's the point?

All these indie games disrupting the gaming industry, gone. Game dev takes a lot of time and money, guess big companies will be the only ones who can afford to do it. The indie guy trying to sell his game for 5$ will be buried by a company that steals it and dumps a few hundred K into it to make a better version and the original creator is left with nothing.

People think about getting an the stuff from companies for free and forget that big companies would benefit most with no protection to the little guy. There is a reason why the rich want to do this, honestly think about it.

That would just ensure that no one ever commits resources to developing something new...

How does genai make those concerns valid again?

I'm yet to see how AI makes #2 relevant.

1&2 solved by digital signature

3 both never happens and when it happens IP laws can't really stop it

If they wanted to delete ALL IP Law, I'd move to have my Sonic fanfiction officially published.

Sally Acorn's back in the canon if I say she is bro!

You can tell China is making strides when suddenly IP laws are a nuisance rather than a fundamental value of the American system lol

Our models

Fundamentally it should be an attribution and reward system, whereas currently it's a false scarcity system.

Everyone should be able to use everything, but you should be required to attribute your source material. If you do, the song / work etc should get an extra licensing fee per play. That way you're always encouraged to provide attribution since you don't lose money from it, and wholly original works will be cheaper and thus more desirable.

Not dissimilar to how song sampling works today but without all the manual negotiation for every license.

And if you fail to provide attribution you get hit with appropriate penalties.

That last sentence is it. IP laws are outrageous monstrosities these days, with folks like Disney getting 100-year long exclusive IP rights to characters and stuff like the DMCA.

But how much do IP laws actually protect the little guy? When a large corporation can bankrupt me by prolonging litigation until I have nothing left, what leverage do I really have?

There are certainly cases where small creators and inventors were able to overcome this disadvantage, but I suspect that they are the tiny minority, celebrated when they do achieve it.

For as much as they are abused, “IP laws” protect small and individual inventors, writers, composers, etc.

Do they? Or do they protect the huge companies that those people have to assign their IP to?

With no patent, copyright or trademark protections the billionaires will own or bury everything.

Trademark protection - yes, it's very important. Same as authorship vs copyright, copyright might be harmful, but authorship is necessary to protect.

If "delete all IP law" means that you can't be sued for using something copyrighted, like, say, openly using Opera Presto leaked sources or making a Nintendo console emulator, and that you can't be sued for rounded corners, and that you can't be sued for using some proprietary hardware interface without royalties, - then it may be good.

But I think these people are after copyleft.

Still, interesting, how many different people are today implementing what was being discussed in very vague strokes 10-15 years ago. All of it at the same time, breaking everything. I mean really all of it. Signal is one of the common ideas, Musk's DOGE is another, federation model being alive again is another, and all the ghouls around. A full Brazilian carnival of grotesque ideas. I want my childhood back (Signal is cool, but the rest is not).

Yeah except you know it isn't going to be that

They're going to go "yeah but not like that"

They'll just remove consumer protections and make it so you own even less and if you try to fight it, you'll have the full weight of the court system to make you poor

Is musk supports it, that's exactly what he's hoping will happen. The rich will be able to take advantage of it and the poor will either stay the same or get worse

Abolish IP for billionaires… not for the poor.

Free for people that already can afford anything.

Thank you for the only based take.

IP law is so fractured that individual US states have different laws that can have international implications. It's a massive hodgepodge that need to be aligned and nationalized.

Copyright for software is a joke. Software is only copyrightable thing, where mandatory copy is not enforced.

This is of course after they spent decades consolidating power, wealth and influence with those same IP laws, while snuffing out all smaller competitors.

The speed with which Americas tech CEOs have embraced this new oligarchic system is astounding. It's almost like that was the plan all along. Almost.

You're cool with it until you realize that they only want to do this to personally gain from it. And guaranteed will protect their own IP, and the IP of every large corporation.

It's just that you yourself and small businesses will no longer have the benefit of intellectual property. Megacorps can steal whatever they want with impunity since they are the only true holders of intellectual property.

That sounds good on paper until you look at the long history of these people and how everything they do is entirely focused on their own benefit over that of others. They gain something to win here, guaranteed they aren't going to let themselves lose on anything either.

It's the same sort of situation as AI regulation. Sam Altman and openai want the United States to crack down and make it extremely difficult to develop new models. Why? So that they don't have any competition. They already got their foot in the door they want to close the door for anyone else.

This is very likely the same sort of situation.

Removing copyright entirely is a bridge too far.

Just roll it back to a reasonable time limit (I dunno, 7 years?), and categorically reject all further lobbying attempts from Disney and the like.

I'd like to get back to 'for limited time'. Patents 10 years, no extensions. Copyright, 10 years, no extensions. Trademarks indefinite as long as the owner still has a meaningful business still operating and using the trademark ( this one is tricky to define well).

A government stipend to make public art or open source software or literature or whatever sounds pretty great. It's hard to see how we get there from here. But it'd be great.

France has something like it for artists I think.

And the second they get it, they reinvent IP law, but in an even more restricted form.

What libertarians? I don't know much about Dorsey, but Musk doesn't seem much like a libertarian to me.

You wouldn't download a car?

I'm not a libertarian and I want everything to be free. If I have an idea on how to make a device that betters the lives of those around me, why the hell would I keep it to myself or try to become rich off it?

God if every innovation stuck behind patent trolls was suddenly allowed to see the light of day, we'd basically solve the energy crisis overnight... and we'd see games that used the Nemesis System

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.

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.

I hate agreeing with these assholes, but I do in this case.

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.

If your opposition innovates and you don’t, you’re going to be destroyed.

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...

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.

Was that from Bluesky or somewhere else?

+1 and it's embarrassing seeing all the temporarily embarrassed millionaires ITT

In the manufacturing space, people are questioning if patents help them at all. There is no stopping China from copying your design and selling it on Aliexpress. In fact, since you're almost certainly getting your product manufactured in China in the first place, there is no stopping the very manufacturing plant you're using from producing extras and undercutting you.

Consider this old EEVblog vid about bringing a product to market, and the #1 tip is "don't bother with a patent": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7BL1O0xCcY

Patents have evolved to be useful to patent trolls. That's it.

That's not what Dorsey and Musk are after, though. They want to kill copyright law because it's inconvenient for AI training data.

Research is supposed to be publicly funded

Patent documents are rarely useful because they're kept as general and opaque as possible to cover as many innovations as possible. I agree that it's important to protect manufacturing, but patents are not the right way to go about it for at least two reasons: (1) they block innovation by design (e-ink screens are great examples) and (2) they create a huge barrier to entry for new ideas (think about how many lawyers are making a living on this) I disagree with the senders on so many things. But patents were invented in a world of monarchies and craftsmen. Time to go!

Getting rid of IP law basically makes mob tactics the only way to ensure compensation for investment in inventions.

it costs millions of dollars to get a manufacturing process up and running and in a good enough state to where it can actually work out financially. Without patents, your competitor can just take all of that work and investment and just copy it with the benefit of doing it right the first time, so they're able to undercut you on cost.

This argument makes no sense. Manufacturing lines are built all that time for unpatented products, plus a competitor can't just "take all of that work and investment", they will need to put in money to create their own product, even if it's a copy they still need to make it work, as well as build their own production capacity.

They'll be second to market, and presumably need to undercut price to get market share... This is a very risky endeavour, unless the profit margins are huge, and in which case, good thing that there's no patents...

If the research is so costly and complex (pharmaceutical, aeronautical,...), then it should be at least partly funded by the government, through partnerships between universities and companies.

Patents are not a solution.

No! Why would you do that? When you can eat them instead

You know, Disney is an awful mega corporation, but wow would I love to see them turn on this administration with their full ire. The mouse v swasticars

I don't think so, it seems they are already immune to it on that front

Also, patents shouldn’t be filable once prior art exists.

Aka Nintendo patenting game mechanics 30 years after the fact to try and sue Palworld.

Also game mechanics and UI features being tied to existing functionality (Amazon’s “one click”, Apple’s “swipe to unlock”) should not be considered novel.

This is the way.

I see the value in trademarks because it prevents people from selling knock-offs. In some cases (medicine, machine tools) using a knock-off could be deadly.

For patents, I don't think it should be one-size-fits-all. A modern drug takes a lot longer to develop than some e-commerce thing like one-click ordering. Different categories of thing could get different lengths of patent protection. Also, IMO, the clock should start once something is available in the market. Again, I'm thinking of medicine. Something might be working in the lab so it's patented, but going from lab to store shelves is not quick. If the clock starts immediately, then that mostly benefits huge and rich pharma companies that can move extremely quickly.

I strongly believe that if we have copyrights, they should be short with an optional renewal that's also short. Too much of our culture is locked up by companies like Disney. They shouldn't be able to hold onto it for more than a century. That's absurd. For the most part, media makes the vast majority of its money in months. 14 years gives the creator not only the most lucrative period, but also the vast majority of the tail of the distribution. It would also be good if corporate-owned copyright had a much shorter term than copyrights owned by individuals. And, we also need to have a way for people to get their own creations back, by say cancelling the copyright assignment.

I would still keep patents at about 20 years. There's some nuance that needs to change to prevent, say, Nintendo from retroactively patenting Pokemon after Palworld comes out, but yeah patent law needs a colonic.

I'd be okay with 20 or even 30 year copyright terms on complete works, but I would be more open on derivative works and fair use.

I want stricter trademark law. Trademark should be about knowing where your products come from. A manufacturer gets right of way over a mark so that they can defend their own reputation, and I'll help them defend that mark because I want to know where the goods I buy come from.

It should not be legal to buy a commodity item and slap your brand on it. I see this a lot in the tool market. There seems to be two 6" jointers in production in the world today, the one JET makes, and the one everyone else sells. Wen, Craftsman and Porter Cable among many others sell the same 6" jointer. Speaking of Craftsman, that brand is now owned by Stanley Black & Decker, who also owns Porter Cable, DeWalt, and several others. Most of what they use this for is to sell mutually incompatible yet functionally similar power tools so you have to buy more batteries. They might design or build some of their tools in-house, but many of them they buy from some other company and just put their stickers on. Is it, or is it not, a "Craftsman"?

Then you've got Amazon, Temu, AliExpress and other Chinese dropshipping platforms. They make a whole bunch of shit and then register nineteen or twenty bullshit trademarks to sell the same thing under. I would make that illegal; if you have a brand that is suitable for selling a given item, you're not allowed another for that purpose. Trademarks are supposed to reduce consumer confusion, you're using them to increase consumer confusion. If I am elected dictator, that kind of behavior will earn you a public trepanning.