[_DeadFred_]

Patents are what allowed the industrial revolution to happen. No one is bringing a cotton gin from idea to design to manufacturing to market if the second you release it every manufacturing company in the world can start making their won.

[joquarky]

I wonder how things were invented before patents.

[freejazz]

The king paid for it

[keeda]

This strawman pops up often. The purpose of IP is to "promote" progress. The word was carefully chosen.

And luckily we have years of research, empirical and otherwise, showing the impact of IP on innovation and the arts. It's a very complex, multi-dimensional topic where outcomes vary depending on a combination of things like industry, subject matter, time frame, level of economic development of the country, strictness of enforcement, and more.

However overall the impact of IP is much more positive than HN would think, largely because the material and discourse that has gotten airtime here is something that aligns more with the "information wants to be free" crowd.