Comment by Guestmodinfo
17 hours ago
I wonder why should Tesla , who wanted to give us free electricity lost all his patents (time ran out in those times) while he was still living. And these rent seeking entities get to keep their copyrights for far too long. Are they more important than Nikola Tesla?
Someone would retort that patent is not same as copyright. But really dude that's all just made up stuff by politicians and corporations. In the end Tesla died pennyless and these corporations and entities get to hoard all the human creativity till what it looks like an eternity for my meagre life span.
Patents can hold up economic development of certain industries much more than copyright. Which can have huge implications if they are on fundamentals.
For example commercial 3D printing (using FDM) was likely significantly stalled until the relevant patent expired.
Culture is of course important but there can always be new successful Alternatives.
As a society, modern humanity has decided that capitalism is more important than free electricity, even if it saves lives.
We have enough electricity that everyone in the USA could have a generous free allowance.
We've decided it's better to charge for electricity, and if an AI company can pay for it to train models, but someone freezing to death in their home cannot pay for it, that capital is a signal that the data-center should get the electricity, not the dying individual.
This isn't a matter of copyright, this is a matter of how we structure society.