| > Both statements can be true. Sure. I mentioned it because some people have been pretty hostile to the idea that IP should protect people. They argued as if a technology that makes human innovation obsolete should automatically invalidate copyright because it's would be no longer needed either. And screw the people whose work that innovation was built upon - licenses, consent, etc. > Presumably you own a smartphone Maybe the plane was a bad example, I used it because it was one of the first things which made me realize how many orders of magnitude individual wealth spans. There are everyday items which you could make on your own (e.g. furniture) and on the other end there are massive projects which require their own specialized supply chains (e.g. planes). Smartphones fall somewhere in the middle, probably. They benefit immensely from economies of scale and that the same infrastructure (fabs) can make parts for smartphones, computers and make other device types - both unlike planes. A more telling comparison perhaps would be how many people you need to get together to make 1) one of the item, 2) how many to make enough to serve that group, and 3) how many so each person in the group has one. A plane can, after all, serve many people at once. Having one for yourself is, in part, where the extravagance of owning one as a singular person comes from. |
I may well have been one of those people in a previous exchange. I argue that IP law only protects people as a means to an end. As a severe restriction of individual freedoms, I firmly believe that its only legitimate purpose can be the net benefit of society as a whole. If any given aspect of IP law (including copyright) is no longer required to encourage innovation then it should be abolished.
All of that is perfectly consistent with the ideal of rewarding people for the full transitive value of their work which itself follows naturally from the goal of incentivizing innovation.
Regarding the plane, I apologize if my tone tended towards quibbling. I understood and agree with the point you were trying to make about income inequality. Private jets constitute an almost absurd level of physical resource allocation to the individual. Jet engines alone require significant quantities of rhenium, an element that's slightly rarer than platinum. I don't really see how any of that relates to copyright or AI though.