[billybob]

Pure free market capitalism would be if I could buy your book the day it's released, make photocopies, and sell them outside the bookstore for cheaper.

Pure free market capitalism would let me make a fake Rolex. It would let me reverse-engineer an iPod and sell it with the label "iPod."

There are downsides to this, and that's why we have IP laws. But those laws are not free market capitalism; they are restraints on it.

[stretchwithme]

When the pioneer goes out into the wilderness and establishes a farm, doing the hard work of removing stumps and planting a crop, he has added to the value of that land and deserves to have ownership recognized and protected.

The freedom of others to wander the wilderness, eating whatever they find is taken away. But it is reasonable to curtail it, because agriculture is very productive compared to the hunter gatherer approach. And it is just that the one that plants should be the one that gets to eat the results or trade it for the work of other people.

Its also reasonable that when it takes time and effort to develop a solution to a problem that the one solving it should be able to derive financial benefit from it.

If we don't want people to grow food, live in houses or build Disney Land, we should eliminate physical property rights. And if we don't want people to invent smart phones, cures for cancer and televisions, we should eliminate patents.

Why should we curtail the humans freedom to go anywhere they please? Or sell any device they decide to make?

For the very same reason that we recognize each other's rights to begin with. Because it is in our mutual self interest to do so.

I could just eat the people around me for dinner, but when I recognize their right to exist, to speak freely, to have property, a whole world of commerce and culture becomes possible. And that benefits me. In fact, my food is actually easier to get.

And so it is with intellectual property. Or should be. Whatever rules we use, they should be promoting our mutual well being.

[dkl]

> And if we don't want people to invent smart phones, cures for cancer and televisions, we should eliminate patents.

I reject this. Software, which is a component of all of the things you mention, didn't always have patents, and it flourished without them.

[stretchwithme]

I think patents make sense when it is our mutual self interest to have them. If something is more abundant without them, then it makes no sense to patent that thing.

The statement you are rejecting was a general one. There can and should be exceptions based upon the evidence.

Which suggests we should actually vary the length of patents experimentally to obtain the evidence.

[stretchwithme]

Even within the software realm, it makes sense that some things be patentable and others not.

For example, if you create translation software that requires a lot of resources to develop, patents probably makes sense.

But in other things, patents are an obstacle. For example, technologies that connect people and organizations that must be agreed upon to work and where establishing a common language is more valuable than could be obtained by simple adoption by an individual.

Think HTML and HTTP and TCP/IP. Similar technologies that were controlled by companies suffered because they were controlled by companies. Their attempts to charge a toll impaired adoption. The incentives lead companies to not connect, to differentiate and not agree.

So when people point to the Internet as an example of why government should be making technology choices, what they are really pointing to is an example of inappropriate patenting that could only be overcome by an entity with more interest in seeing the thing succeed than in charging a toll.

In other words, precisely the set of interests people would have if a patent did not apply in this situation.

[r0s]

These and many other rules comprise the "free market" as we know it.

A few rules establish an entire new market segment operating under "creative commons" or "copyleft" rules.

When I hear attacks on that system by companies external, all I perceive is chagrin. Petty jealousy, inability to compete.

[mikecane]

I submit that "free market" and "capitalism" are antagonistic to one another and should never be mixed for they cannot co-exist. One is active enterprise, the other is non-productive gambling and usury. (And I know there are people ready to downvote me for that sentence, but put away your notions of Wall Street being "investors." Risk-taking VCs are, but not Wall Street.)

[gburt]

I would call the Rolex/iPod examples fraud, wouldn't you? "Free market capitalism" is only rarely conflated with anarchy. (don't get me wrong, I agree that Intellectual Property is the opposite of "free market")

[barrkel]

Do people who buy fake Rolexes think they are real, or fakes? If you go into a jewellery shop and spend a lot of money on a Rolex but it turns out to be fake, then sure, it's probably fraud. But if you buy one out on the street for 10 bucks, then I hardly think it's fraud. But these things are independent of the physical form of the thing sold; it comes down to the understanding of what is being sold, as in a contract of sale, implicit or explicit.

[ataggart]

If you know it's a fake, then why does it matter what the label says?

[pessimizer]

To impress your peers, which is often the same reason you would buy the real item. That is why manufacturers of luxury and designer products try to conflate knockoffs and counterfeits in legislation.

[jeffool]

More likely it would be trademark violation. After all, who is to decide what "Rolex" means, anyway?

[gburt]

Absolutely. Today. But what I was getting at is if we were to hypothetically do away with IP, what he was claiming was a side effect doesn't seem to be one to me. It seems that if someone pretended to be selling a Rolex, and it was accepted that Rolexes were good, high quality watches produced by the Rolex company, they would be committing fraud.

Who gets to decide what any word means? Why is it special that it's a proper noun? If someone were going around claiming to be jeffool from HN, that'd be a clear case of fraud too, no?

[barrkel]

Trademark is another form of IP.

[derleth]

Trademark is primarily consumer protection.

[Jach]

That might have been why it was created, but it's not how it's primarily used today, nor do I think it does that good a job combating "customer confusion". (Remember, even without Ubuntu calling their OS "Windows", Dell customers still sent back Ubuntu laptops complaining they thought they were getting Windows.) Just like copyrights and patents were created to encourage innovators to innovate and share with society--the goal was improving society--that original purpose is lost in the primary uses of IP laws today.