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.”
So delete all pharmaceutical IP to make drugs accessible to everyone and save taxpayers trillions?
“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.
I see the point you’re aiming at, but it’s not little companies discovering new drugs it’s giant corporations (often on the back of government research money) who then ‘swoop in’ to protect their own profits while people in underdeveloped nations die of tuberculosis or whatever because they would rather make money than save lives.
You might be surprised how small medical research labs can be. The lady responsible for nanolipid particles used in transporting rNA vaccines, in similar fashion to how an organelle gets packaged in membrane and cast out, spent decades cruising on bare minimum public funding.
What costs money is testing phases, including a lab to hold and propogate immortal cell lines and later production lines to create enough doses for thousands of human trials.
Although tbh I don’t expect the USA to be upholding strict drug safety standards in the near future.
What costs money is testing phases, including a lab to hold and propogate immortal cell lines and later production lines to create enough doses for thousands of human trials.
Thank you. These arguments are always hard to read. Sure, small labs are where it usually starts, but without enormous and risky investments, we would never have the drugs we have today. Most of these investments fail miserably, so one successful drug must cover the costs of ten unsuccessful ones. Nobody would do that if their IP weren’t protected. It’s more about reputation than facts when it comes to this topic.
Unless it were completely government funded, but that’s clearly not was Illegal Immigrant Billionaire Elon Musk and the Orange Felon are proposing so yeah, IP Laws applying to Pharmaceuticals all the way.
I was speaking generally and obviously there are exceptions and contributions from all over the place. But it’s not tiny labs like that that hold a death-grip on the patents to drugs that are being sold for absurd amounts of money that are far out of reach of the people who need them. Also while I recognize that this kind of research is expensive it must also be recognized that much of that research is funded, directly or indirectly, by the US government through the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control, etc, so the fact that these big corporations are effectively getting a hand-out and then charging an arm and a leg for it sticks in my craw. But then maybe I’m just weird for thinking that human life is more important than quarterly profits.
The development of new medications should be 100% funded by governments and the IP that comes out of it should be 100% if the government, aka the people.
Governments are the ones that do the investments of projects that don’t directly make money but are good for humanity.
You don’t like that and the hepac drug can suddenly cost 70 dollars
You’re right.
In the US the tax payer subsidizes almost all drug research. Between 2010 and 2019 the NIH spent $184 Billion on all but 2 drugs approved by the FDA.
It worked out to about $1.5 Billion for each R&D product with a novel target and about $600 mill for each R&D product with multiple targets.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10148199/
Or
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2804378
The cost to develop each drug is between about $1 and $2.5 Billion
I’m not sure how much is subsidized outside of NIH but I’d imagine other countries are doing the same.
Why should companies own the whole IP or perhaps why should they have any ownership if most of the funding is from the public?
This is a great point. I know that some pharmas actually do internally funded research, it’s a thing, it happens, but it’s completely dwarfed by shareholder giveaways and government subsidies ofc.
The problem I mostly have is even when those costs are recouped most companies fight tooth and nail to keep the prices high and unaffordable in order to line the pockets of investors.
Yes, 100%.
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.
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!
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
Do it., but also ensure that all work enters the public domain and is free for anyone to use, modify, commercialize, or basically whatever the GPL says.
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.
“I don’t think so. Whatever is yours is ours, whatever is ours stays ours. Thank you for understanding.”
—Microsoft et al.
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.
The GPL is basically trying to make a world without copyright. The GPL basically only has teeth in a world where copyright exists. If copyright didn’t exist then everything would be in the public domain and the GPL would be toothless, but that’s fine because it would no longer be unnecessary.
No, the GPL very much requires copyright to work. The whole point is copyleft, which obligates changes to the code remain under the same license and be available to everyone.
Without copyright, companies just wouldn’t share their changes at all. The whole TIVO-ization clause in the GPL v3 would be irrelevant since TIVO can very much take without giving back. Copyright is very much essential to the whole concept of the GPL working.
Just think, why would anyone want to use Linux if Microsoft or Apple could just bake Linux into their offering?
No, the GPL very much requires copyright to work
That’s what I said.
If copyright didn’t exist then everything would be in the public domain and the GPL would be toothless, but that’s fine because it would no longer be unnecessary.
I’m saying it is necessary to achieve the aims of the GPL.
If it was just about ensuring the source is free, the MIT license would be sufficient. The GPL goes further and forces modifications to also be free, which relies on copyright.
I’m saying it is necessary to achieve the aims of the GPL.
Which would make GPL toothless, but that’s fine because it would no longer be necessary.
I’m saying it is necessary to achieve the aims of the GPL.
Until copyright no longer exists and everything is in the public domain, as I said.
How are you going to enforce the GPL in a world where copyright doesn’t exist?
How are you going to enforce the GPL in a world where copyright doesn’t exist?
And that’s what I’m saying, you can’t, therefore the aims of the GPL cannot be achieved. The GPL was created specifically to force modifications to be shared. The MIT license was created to be as close to public domain as possible, but within a copyright context (the only obligation is to retain the license text on source distributions).
If everything is public domain, then there would be no functional changes to MIT-licensed code, whereas GPL-licensed code would become a free-for-all with companies no longer being obligated to share their changes.
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.
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.
Yeah, the problem was not the original copyright law which gave incentive for coming up with new ideas by giving you rights to that idea for long enough that you can be profitable, the problem is that it’s been extended to the point that the people who came up with the idea are long dead and it’s still under copyright for massive corporations.
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.
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
“Delete all IP law” say people who have never created anything of any value to humanity.
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
No! Why would you do that? When you can eat them instead
I don’t want to ingest that many second hand drugs.
Oh no, this is so… good idea. Yarr! Pirate Party approves.
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.
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.
Getting rid of IP law basically makes mob tactics the only way to ensure compensation for investment in inventions.
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!
Patent documents are rarely useful because they’re kept as general and opaque as possible to cover as many innovations as possible.
I think this is a problem that can be fixed inside of patent system. Make it so by the end of patent life there is “how to build production line of this” manual.
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.
Manufacturing lines are built all that time for unpatented products,
And cheaply, because the research and productisation has been done by somebody else - this is an argument for patents
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,
Not true. One major issue is that many competitors literally copy the product exactly. Fake products wreck the original company
even if it’s a copy they still need to make it work,
That is 100x easier when you have a working product to clone
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…
The point is exactly that the fake product undercuts the original by a huge amount (they had no investment to pay off).
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.
I agree that the government model makes sense for a lot of areas and products. But note that a government won’t invest millions or billions in developing a product if another country immediately fakes the product and prevents the government from collecting back the taxes it spent on the research.
As I discuss above there are lots of criticisms to the current IP laws - adjustment is 1000x better than abolishing a system that has driven research and development for several hundred years
if another country immediately fakes the product and prevents the government from collecting back the taxes it spent on the research
It seems you misunderstand the goal of goverment. Goverment doesn’t care if budget goes down, when quality of life goes up. What is the point of not researching and having bigger budget, if it can’t buy thing that did not get created?
And then on goverment level there is no such thing as copyright or patent. On goverment level laws are not some external condition, but something that changed regularly.
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,
Not true. One major issue is that many competitors literally copy the product exactly. Fake products wreck the original company
They STILL need to put in money to create their own product. You know, they can’t magic production lines into existance.
It seems you misunderstand the goal of goverment.
This is your opinion of what you want governments to be, not what they actually are.
What is the point of not researching and having bigger budget, if it can’t buy thing that did not get created?
What a lot of negatives and hypotheticals. All solved by getting a return on investment and having that money to do more things with, including research.
And then on goverment level there is no such thing as copyright or patent.
I’d like to introduce you to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) which is an intergovernmental organisation that does precisely what you say doesn’t exist.
They STILL need to put in money to create their own product.
Sure, but the cost to duplicate the product is tiny compared to researching, developing then creating a production run for it. And this fake normally severely impacts the profits for the inventor.
But now we’re just repeating the same arguments.
It seems you misunderstand the goal of goverment.
This is your opinion of what you want governments to be, not what they actually are.
I am sorry your country doesn’t try or even claim to be social.
What is the point of not researching and having bigger budget, if it can’t buy thing that did not get created?
What a lot of negatives and hypotheticals. All solved by getting a return on investment and having that money to do more things with, including research.
So in the end money will be spent on research anyway.
And then on goverment level there is no such thing as copyright or patent.
I’d like to introduce you to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) which is an intergovernmental organisation that does precisely what you say doesn’t exist.
And what next? It can’t stop any goverment from ignoring copyright or patent.
You’re utterly delusional. If this system has done anything is to stiffle small, independent producers and consolidate power in megacorporations.
This is the kind of crap you’re defending: https://patents.justia.com/patent/12268585
This is a random, recent patent from P&G. Read that bullshit, and then tell if if what they’re describing isn’t the most generic design for a diaper or sanitary napkin ever?
“One permeable layer facing the wearer, then a semipermeable layer that tries to only allow liquid to move away from the wearer, then an absorbing layer, then an outer impermeable layer”
Oh boy, if it wasn’t for that patent, I’d be pumping 500 million dollars into building a factory so I can flood the market with my cheap fake products! - said nobody when they read that.
It’s hilarious how far removed from reality your ideal of patents is…
You appear to want to completely burn down a system you don’t understand because of some examples of misuse. For example, as there are slumlords, should we make all property free? Or should we solve the underlying problem (of massive capital flows to the rich?)
You also have no idea how to read and understand a patent. The way they are written is horrendously verbose and highly confusing, but so are medical research papers or legal case summaries, and for the similar reasons: these are highly technical documents that have to follow common law (i.e. a long history of legal decisions taken in IP disputes).
The real problem in the US IMHO has been the constant defunding of the patent office that has allowed a large number of very poor patents to be filed. The problems you are screaming about largely go to that root cause.
But don’t throw the baby out with the bath water - you have no idea how bad that would be for everybody but the mega corporations.
Cool story bro.
That would be a-m-a-z-i-n-g. Private game servers, fan remakes of shows and movies, I would be over the moon.
Too bad it won’t happen
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 isn’t as forward thinking as you’d want it to be.
For as much as they are abused, “IP laws” protect small and individual inventors, writers, composers, etc.
With no patent, copyright or trademark protections the billionaires will own or bury everything.
What is needed is to bring the laws back to their intended purpose.
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.
The imbalance against giant corporations isn’t anything to sneeze at, but there are just as many (probably more) small time companies breaking copyright law and hoping nobody notices. For example, stealing artwork to print on cheap crap that you sell below what the creator is selling them for. If they’re in an area that recognizes that copyright then they’re going to lose every time, and they’re not going to have enough money to drag it out. After that happens artists can recover all the earnings that were made with their work. Without that the artist is just fucked.
“Whatabout…”
The reason IP exists isn’t a whatabout, it kinda sounds like you just don’t want to hear about anyone other than giant corporations benefitting from 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).
