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.”
They don’t want to delete all IP law, they just want to delete the IP law which is preventing them from postponing the collapse of the AI hype a little bit more.
… Delete… all… IP law?
So… just literally make all piracy legal, switch all gaming and tv show and movie production/consumption… to an optional donation model?
Fuck it, why not.
I am both an avid pirate and have a degree in econ, wrote papers as an undergrad on how to potentially reform the DMCA… and uh yeah, at this point yeah no one has any fucking idea how any thing works, everyone is an idiot, sure fuck it, blow it all up, why not.
I mean, I’d like to get rid of IP Law too…
But I actually mean get rid of, not an “Under New Management” sense like Elon The Musky Husky wants
They want to do this so they can feed their ai models.
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
Honestly, I’m a fan of abolishing IP law too, but for some reason I suspect the implementation of that they support is very different than the one I support
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.
“Delete all IP law” say people who have never created anything of any value to humanity.
Why not get rid of the patent trolls, the monopolies shelving useful technologies through patent loopholes, the … Oh I see the tech billionaires again wanting to uproot a system because loopholes are just too much effort now.
Talking about “IP” as if it were a single thing confuses any debate. Copyright is not a patent, which is not a trademark - they do different things.
Software patents actually should be deleted. It is impractical to avoid accidentally infringing as there are multiple ways to describe the same system using totally different technical descriptions. Copyright for software was enough.
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.
Of course they are both lying. As with all capitalists, they will always use the law to seize greater power.
i’d also like to delete all billionaires
This would be disastrous for actual manufacturing because a patent is the only thing that makes it worthwhile to spend a bunch of money upfront to develop a new technology. Unlike with software where you don’t have nearly as much up front capital investment to develop something, 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. The alternative is that everyone is super secretive about what they’re doing and no knowledge is shared, which is even worse. Patents are an awesome solution to this problem because they are public documents that explain how technologies work, but the law allows a monopoly on that technology for a limited amount of time. I also feel that in the current landscape, copyright is probably also good (although I would prefer it to be more limited) because I don’t want people who are actually coming up with new ideas having to compete with thousands of AI slop copycats ruining the market.
TL;DR- patents are good if you’re actually building things, tech bros are morons who think everything is software.
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.
Getting rid of IP law basically makes mob tactics the only way to ensure compensation for investment in inventions.
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!
It’s not a surprise that all these techbros who want to steal everything and feed it into their AI machines without paying a single fucking cent to the original creators all the sudden want to get rid of IP. They can lead by example by submitting their IP into the public domain.
Or maybe they’re just massive frauds?
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.
Oh no, this is so… good idea. Yarr! Pirate Party approves.
Yes, I’m fully aware we want to abolish IP law for different reasons but still, I’m onboard.
