[steponlego]

There's nothing wrong with stealing and copying. After all, intellectual property is a mere legal fiction, it doesn't exist in the real world. You want to keep secrets? Don't share things with people, and especially don't try to sell your secrets.

[jvanderbot]

All property is fiction if you squint hard enough at every human society convention. "they shouldn't have built a door" is not adequate defense against breaking and entering allegations.

A secure system for sharing information is basically a door with a lock. You break the lock and steal something, you have broken the law.

[FirmwareBurner]

>You break the lock and steal something, you have broken the law.

Law enforcement at that scale is highly asymmetrical. Large powerful countries can act like bullies because "what are you gonna do about it?".

Yeah, we have the UN and international courts and what not, but those are toothless as without a superior power to act as the enforcer, they can wipe their ass with your laws, complaint or court ruling and do as they please anyway.

[jvanderbot]

Granted!

However none of that implies:

> There's nothing wrong with stealing and copying.

[steponlego]

I agree, this is why I have a solid door and have armed myself.

[gataca]

Attempt at edgy take but only ends up justifying 'might makes right'

[hackinthebochs]

"Might makes right" isn't a subject for justification, it is the natural state of the world. It's like asking for a justification for gravity. It's just a category error.

[freitzkriesler2]

Unfortunately, might does make right. Violence is the ultimate authority and the fact most people don't acknowledge or willfully don't know this is embarrassing.

[3seashells]

I'm not talking about ip, I'm talking about ip generating capability.

[jauntywundrkind]

Not believing in or investing in your own biopower is really scary, yeah. The belief that once you steal some documents you'll be able to start doing the thing, the disbelief in having your own seasoned smart ingenuitous people who make stuff happen... It's kind of madcap to me.

It signals a very scary zero-sum mentality of getting ahead at any cost. But like, it's the college student who cheats on every exam... yeah you're getting good grades. Yeah you eventually figured out how to copycat the stuff. What's that worth? Is the output enough?

I do appreciate a lot though the counter view in this thread that IP is a made up fiction, that it's artificial, and that we could probably be much greater a world if we had reward mechanisms to give other than complete & total control for 20+ years.