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> outdated notions of "intellectual property."

Could you elaborate? What is wrong with current notion of intellectual property? What is outdated about it?

In general I see this point targeting patents, not the whole concept of IP.



Not sure why you're being downvoted; this is a very reasonable question.

...and truth be told, I'm not exactly sure what I mean. But I do think that it's plain to notice that the internet tends to facilitate a style of sharing that is inconsistent with the "copyright" model of intellectual property (in addition to precluding a functioning patent system, as you point out).

It seems to me that we need to make peace with the innate tendencies of information, including the tendency of data to be copied and shared. The myth of Prometheus teaches us that this is a message deep in the species, and yet somehow governments have gotten the idea that they have the power to reverse it.

If the internet and governments clash head-to-head, of course the internet will win. The forward march of time does not yield, and especially not for something so fragile and childish as a claim to own an idea.

So I don't exactly know which notions of IP will become outdated and when, but I can visualize easily enough that some of them will at some future point.


The practical real world beneficiaries of IP law in modern time are nigh exclusively international business conglomerates using it for rent seeking. The number of individual creatives who use the courts to enforce their copyrights as a revenue stream are drops from a spigot next to a torrential river of institutionalized copyright trolling, cross-lawsuits between dozens of lawyers from fortune 500s, and the systemic privatization of culture as a means for profit.

Whole generations have had their heritages locked up in corporate coffers for going on a century now with no end in sight, and that kind of abuse will leave lasting scars on humanity as a whole. I would anticipate historians a millennia from now might reflect on this time as having sufficient creative and intellectual death by copyright aside other calamities like global warming, exploitation of third world labor, or nuclear proliferation as the principal sins of the 20th and 21st century.


Imaginary Property has a number of drawbacks [0]. Among them, the fact that it trumps real property - IP will prevent you from using your own real property as you see fit. (For example, playing music in your garage without a broadcasting license [1].)

[0] https://mises.org/library/against-intellectual-property-0

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/424...




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