Comment by ninetyninenine
8 days ago
>We don't recognize ownership of ideas as a legitimate concept.
Who is this "we" you're referring to? As far as I know it's you and your 2 or 3 online pen pals because the rest of the world recognizes it as a legitimate concept such that it's been encoded into law and billions and billions have been invested into said said ideas on the assumption that those laws will provide the idea creators with "ownership" of said ideas.
You have it backwards. It's a relative minority that recognizes it as a legitimate concept. It's just that this minority lobbied for the laws.
(As a curiosity, these same minorities lobby for the opposite, or turn a blind eye, when it's contrary to their interests. See the current LLM craze, and also... did you know Hollywood was founded on copyright infringement, and that its location was chosen to enable this? Put that in your pipe and smoke it).
(Or also: many AAA game developers played pirated games in their youth. It was part of their formative years. )
Most people don't believe in the concept. You don't either, regardless of your protests here: you admitted you pirate everything. If you believed this was deeply immortal and harmful you wouldn't.
Your actions speak louder than your words.
> As a curiosity, these same minorities lobby for the opposite, or turn a blind eye, when it's contrary to their interests.
> See the current LLM craze
Excellent point. Watching the corporations engage in AI washing of massive scale copyright infringement was extremely disgusting.
I don't even fault them for doing it, technology should not be held back due to intellectual property nonsense. It's the "rules for thee but not for me" nonsense that's offensive.
> did you know Hollywood was founded on copyright infringement, and that its location was chosen to enable this?
Plenty of industries were. Samuel Slater, the so called father of the american industrial revolution, memorized british designs before immigrating to the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater
I used to have a small collection of examples just like this. If I remember correctly, some drug companies chose specific European countries due to their stance on intellectual property.
Infringement is only inconvenient when others do it to them, never when they do it to others. Every monopolist was once an infringer. They always climb the ladder and try to kick it out so the next guy can't touch them.
Copyright abolitionists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_abolition
I have no "pen pals" from this site. Anyone replying to you is doing so independently.
Recognition of intellectual property is just an illusion. They have vested interests, of course they're going to recognize it. Doesn't change the underlying absurdity of the system. Doesn't change the fact they constantly run smack into reality on a daily basis. "Their" works are mercilessly copied, "their" inventions are reverse engineered, AIs are trained on "their" creations, generic versions of "their" drugs are made... It's a constant unceasing fight against reality, completely senseless, and they still can't stop any of it. Because it's not actually real.
The idea of exchanging paper for material goods is also absurd. There are also vested interests that rely on maintaining this illusion. They want people to believe that something like a tesla can actually be exchanged for worthless paper. None of this is real so there's endless fights against people who try to make illegal copies of the paper. It's an endless fight, because it's not actually real.
The entire economy is an illusion. But it works because most people buy into the hallucination. IP is much of the same thing. If there's only a few people creating IP laws it doesn't mean anything. It only works because the majority of people respect said IP laws. IP exists because the majority hallucinates it into reality.
Even the concept of "laws" are illusions. They are total fabrications created by mankind. Your entire life is built upon thousands of fabricated concepts and illusions that are in many ways incompatible with your ancient genetic biology. So saying that IP isn't "natural" is meaningless.
I don't even disagree with you there. Pretty much every human concept is made up by our own minds. The economy as a whole is an especially hilarious case since fiat money is backed by literally nothing since 1971.
However, I do draw a distinction between reasonable enforceable laws and schizophrenic unenforceable laws.
Most laws are pretty reasonable. The vast majority of people are peaceful. Relatively few people commit cold blooded murder. When one does happen, criminals are caught and imprisoned so that they are no longer part of society. It's a manageable problem.
Intellectual property is not like that. Infringement is as easy and normal as breathing. It happens every day at massive scales. It happens every time you download a nice photo from some website and send it to a friend. There are so many infringements taking place you cannot hope to ever punish them all. Often you cannot even catch perpetrators. The law is essentially unenforceable against the common man. There is no point.
In my country I've seen copyright infringement figures at over 80%. As in, 8 out every 10 people has infringed copyright at least once in their lifetimes. People talk about downloading music like it's nothing. Copy shops get set up literally next door to universities to help students copy entire books and course materials. Video game consoles are bought already modchipped straight from the stores. Every town has an informal market where copied media is sold cheaply, there's one less than 10 minutes away from me. Is this really a crime? Maybe it's actually a custom, already part of our culture.
Intellectual property is quite useful when used by corporations to attack other corporations. Companies are juicy targets for lawsuits. There are also less of them, their numbers are manageable. Leveraging intellectual property against normal folk though? That fight is unwinnable and I really wish they'd stop trying.