
End intellectual property - scotty79
https://aeon.co/essays/the-idea-of-intellectual-property-is-nonsensical-and-pernicious
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esotericn
End copyright.

It creates a situation in which every individual using the internet violates,
or benefits from the violation of, civil law every day.

It creates a situation in which individuals cannot be trusted to run code on
hardware they own.

It creates the conditions for censorship on online platforms.

Just end copyright. The idea that software, music, movies, books and so on
will cease to exist is a complete farce.

I'll keep writing software. You will too. Most of us here will.

Maybe not the commercially driven ones.

I think we've seen enough damage from that already over the last few years.

~~~
olliej
To clarify you're saying that you are ok with someone selling your software?

Or any company could make a closed source distribution of linux?

~~~
esotericn
> To clarify you're saying that you are ok with someone selling your software?

Yes. I contribute to and create software with licences that permit it.

In a world with copyright I prefer GPL-type licenses, in a world without
copyright everything would be MIT-like.

A legal requirement to attribute might be nice but I don't really care. I
think that the legal system should deal with matters of importance, not social
politeness.

> Or any company could make a closed source distribution of linux?

Sure. They wouldn't be able to prevent anyone from copying it.

Ultimately I can't really see a viable business model for it that doesn't
already exist - e.g. Android is already essentially closed source, partly due
to a bunch of binary blobs and partly due to all of the infrastructure built
up around the platform.

~~~
olliej
Without copyright an mit license would not mean anything - the existence of
copyright is the only thing that makes software “property” that you can own.
In a post-copyright world there would not be anything for you to license.

If you want to apply a license to something there has to be something to
license.

~~~
esotericn
Yes.

It's unclear to me what point you're making here.

In a world without copyright all software would be usable in the same way MIT
software is now, except there'd be no attribution requirement.

I specifically mentioned that in my post.

Everything would be public domain.

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kemitchell
Title Alert: This article isn't about ending the rules "intellectual property"
refers to. It's about ending use of the term "intellectual property" to refer
to those rules.

The arguments are in the same class as those we've seen from RMS, who's
invoked and quoted early on. Most generalize to Slippery Slope.

I agree that we are sliding, but not because IP maximalism is naturally
downhill from where we are, or because the hill is all that slippery. Legal
changes take push. They're being pushed. Strong incentives abound. Broad
concepts like "tort" aren't the cause of, say, intentional infliction of
emotional distress doctrines. First sale doctrines aren't developing under
rhetorical sway of "intellectual property" like breach notification laws are
developing under "privacy".

The best recent account of how IP rights form, expand, and strengthen that
I've read recently is Rothman's _The Right of Publicity_. She cites and
decries the "property syllogism", too. But also details the kinds of
conflicts, competing interests, and finer doctrinal confusions that lead to
such rules.

There is a strong point to be made on rhetoric. But I don't think playing into
WIPO's branding importance makes it, or any substitute for it.

------
axilmar
I wholeheartedly and completely disagree with the article.

I believe that copyright should be eternal and one should be able to profit
from their works for as long as their works are found desirable by other
people.

There is nothing to be gained by abolishing copyright. Our culture will not
become richer. Statistically speaking, very few creators can build works of
art as valuable as the ones that their works are based on. The works that have
contributed the most, by far, are all original works.

What is hidden behind these movements is another facet of the socialist
utopia, which does away with merit and wants equality of outcome for everyone,
which is impossible to achieve, as it has been proven again and again in
history.

~~~
mixmastamyk
People aren't eternal.

Imagine if scientific discovery had been protected by copyright terms, we'd be
a lot further behind.

