[qwytw]

> antithetical to how humans have progressed socially and technologically for millenia

I'd argue the opposite. It has been one of the primary driving forces behind human progress for the past 300-400 years. The world today would be a much bleaker and more miserable place if IP rights never became a thing.

Imagine writing or any type of content creation without copyright. Even after the printing press was invented it was basically impossible to make a living only from writing without being independently wealthy, having some rich patron or a daytime job. Publishing any new content was risky and generally unprofitable, it would either flop or if it didn't other publishers would start printing it without giving you a dime.

Without IP rights innovating only makes sense if you're large corporation and have a moat or you're funded by someone else (state/universities/etc.). For any small to medium business it would mean that you would incur all of the costs and couldn't compete with others which would steal your tech as soon as it becomes public.

Of course there is a point where it might start stifling innovation and we might be already past it but that's a bit like calling for air travel to be banned because of the whole Boeing debacle etc.

[pas]

Books are fancy, but let's not mix up progress with being able to live off writing them.

We see innovation in open source every day from small startups, from various sized communities, and from hobbyists.

That said, the startup selling IP model works somewhat in the pharma sector, but that's patents, and you mentioned books, where the whole IP regulation game got abso-fucking-lutely captured by the industry (with their ridiculous 100+ years of copyright).

[zaphirplane]

Human Progress is a lot more than open source software innovation.

[pas]

Yes, obviously. And more than books and pop songs and whatnot. Also more than medicine, though it's definitely up there on the list somewhere.

And all of that is thanks to finally some groups of people pulling out their heads from their asses, stopped trying to focus on trying to loot their neighbors, and instead started to trade.

[qwytw]

> Books are fancy, but let's not mix up progress with being able to live off writing them.

Ok you can substitute this with any type of R&D done by individual or small to large companies.

> We see innovation in open source every day from small startups, from various sized communities, and from hobbyists.

Open source is only really successful in areas where it's a cost centre. Generally, companies mainly invest it into when using OS allows them to reduce their costs and they can focus on other ways of making money/differentiating their products. e.g. there would've been a lot less innovation in OS if Google/Meta/etc. didn't make billions from ads and other services.

> and you mentioned books,

Well yeah.. or any creative content.

> abso-fucking-lutely captured by the industry (with their ridiculous 100+ years of copyright

Yes, I also think that's excessive. To be fair though I don't really understand why do people care that much about being able to use Mickey Mouse in their content. In any case it's obviously preferable to not having any IP protection...

[pas]

Books are rarely written as solutions to overcome a specific pragmatic problem. (We need a blue LED, sure I'll write a novel series about it! We need walkaway-safe nuclear power plants, let me get my quill! We need to come up with a delivery mechanism for mRNA vaccines ... hm ... order the ink and warm up the presses!)

Sure, books are great at popularizing ideas, serve as a unit of discourse, like papers, journals, conferences and whatnot.

But when Dickens wanted to make money he wrote A Christmas Carol not A Teatrise On Socioeconomic Inequalities for Saturnalia. (And most likely he had a bigger impact this way.)

> To be fair though I don't really understand why do people care that much about being able to use Mickey Mouse in their content.

I think people somewhat rightfully feel that the social contract has been unfairly altered. The deal was that Mickey gets a temporary monopoly, and we respect it so we then get it for "free".

In a hypothetical bleak grey philosophical vacuum the first time someone draws a mouse what would be the fair thing? Respecting authorship (so no plagiarism), giving credit, sure, that's the minimum, but can others copy it, add some colors and pizzazz and become the new creative king/queen of the hill? (One one hand, maybe it would give society the best stuff, the most amazing variations of all the themes. On the other hand maybe artists would burn out in 2 seconds and nobody would ever even dare to try to come up with anything original, because the game is to derive better derivatives.)

... but I don't think so. If it would be that easy to turn anything up to 11 in a second, then we would see it all the time. (Instead what we see is conservative reboots/remakes/remixes that fit the current mainstream. With its pros and cons! It's important to note, that it's despite all the brutal forever plus zillion years copyright regime we do get these summer hits that are basically old song with a new spin. And it's fine. And sometimes we get Dune part I, II, and soon III, and hopefully more parts too! Bless the maker and his water!)

[qwytw]

> Books are rarely written as solution

Of course. I just used books as an easiest example of why IP was beneficial and created an environment where individuals could make a living independently by creating content. Indirectly this (amongst other things) create an environment where intellectual work actually became valued by the society.

Patents are probably a more straightforward example .e.g. why would've have Savery, Newcomen, Watt etc. have worked on created and improving the steam engine and how would've they attracted the investment necessary for that if they could in no way profit from their work?

[pas]

Well, why did anyone - before patents - invent anything? :) Fame, recognition, reputation, furthering the king's glory, and of course mad pussy (or whatever the correct terminus technicus is nowadays).

And as I (hopefully) implied before, it's good that we worked out a social contract that incentivizes these things (that we think are the cornerstones of the progress we want/need), but it seems there's quite a lot more work to be done on this, because it was very crude before, and now it's just ridiculously blunt.

And it's a hard problem, I don't want to say that most people today only really get the downsides (higher medicine prices), because the whole drug discovery and push to market pipeline is horribly inefficient, eats money like there's no tomorrow, and it's not just patents. The FDA can grant ~3 years of exclusivity with the marketing authorization, right?

But. We see that patents are already not good enough for medicine. (Or that the busy little lobby beavers built a huge fucking dam around the patent moat. Just to be sure.)

[Teever]

It would be interesting to see which generates more value for humanity -- closed source software or open source.