Comment by Quarrelsome
3 days ago
however they do result in flows of capitals feeding into otherwise unfundable enterprise like R&D; science and engineering, or culture; writing, music, art. Where's the ROI if you invest millions into R&D and your competitor invests $0 and can then just reproduce your works with their logo ontop of yours? To sack off IP and copyright would significantly narrow innovation and result in many artists, scientists and engineers having their income severely suppressed if not eradicated. Instead that money would temporarily go to a bunch of hacks that do nothing but copy and chase the bottom, before vanishing into thin air as the works become entirely unprofitable.
I don't think its as simple as calling them immoral. Rather the immorality comes on them being poorly regulated. With regulated term limits on patents and copyright we create a world where an artist can create licensed product and protect themselves during the course of their career, and people are them able to riff on their works after some decades or after they pass on.
> I don't think its as simple as calling them immoral. Rather the immorality comes on them being poorly regulated
I think if behavior needs to be regulated by government in order to be moral, then it's immoral behavior by default
The regulation doesn't make it moral, the regulation only limits the damage by limiting how immoral you're allowed to be
> I think if behavior needs to be regulated by government in order to be moral, then it's immoral behavior by default
Regulation is creating rules for businesses to run within. This goes back to rule of law. You can't tell a group of children to "behave" and walk away and expect good results and then call the children "bad" when they fail to behave.
Rather, you must give them systems to understand, to channel their energy, productively, in a way that matches the desires of the parent (government) and their strategies. Then you have to meaningfully punish those who intentionally break the rules in order to give those behaving the knowledge that they have chosen the good path and they'll be rewarded for it.
Free markets are not about "morality"/"immortality", its about harnessing an existing energy to make a self-sustaining system. A system a state is less good/interested at keeping going or unable to act quickly enough to move in. But part of creating that system is putting in guard rails to prevent the worst sort of crashes.
The regulation is what makes it worth while for people to invent/write. Patents/copyrights have been a net benefit for society with a smaller negative downside.
I don't see how this disagrees with what I said
Patents and copyrights don't cause people to create things
They prevent people from stealing things that other people created
The immoral behaviour being regulated is the IP theft not the IP creation
Can you point to something that quantifies the positives vs the negatives?
I have a hard time arguing that it's a net positive.
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We can get rid of copyright, patents, trademarks and only have a new right called branding - it allows you to name the thing you invented/created.
In the new world that's incentive for enough people to create. Let knowledge rein free.. bellowing through the lands.
Trademarks are branding
CC BY license for all?