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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • The entire notion of ‘Intellectual Property’ is a cancer on society.

    Intellectual property is a term that wraps a whole bunch of things (copyright, trademarks, patents). Are you fully aware of the impact how abolishing all IP would negative affect society?

    Copyright prevents the KKK from producing and selling Pokemon cartoons with Pikachu supporting stupid shit like white supremecy propaganda. Are you sure you want that protection gone?

    Information and ideas intrinsically accrue value the more they’re known and used, and the incentives provided around their collation and attribution should embody that, not punish them with imaginary locks that provide ownership.

    Lets just take the patents portion of IP for a moment. The first part of what you’re asking for here is exactly what patents do. To have something patented, the patent holder has to fully document the machine/process/method to create the patented item. This is that mechnism that enables the “more known and used”. Society gains this knowledge because the owner fully shares it. A design patent can last for only 14 or 15 years (depending on filing date). The longest type of patent (Utility) lasts only 20 years. After as few as 14 years everyone can use this knowledge without any fees/restrictions/payments.

    This is a be-careful-what-you-wish for situation with what you’re asking for here. There are companies choosing NOT to file patents anymore and simply keep their methods secret. Since they methods aren’t patented they are under no obligation to ever share them publicly. There is a very real chance that many of these technologies/methods may be unknown to society at large for long after the term of normal patent protection would have expired and society would have been able to use the knowledge.

    EDIT: I was trying to think of a good example of a company that agrees with your stance about not patenting and I remembered one. Elon Musk is choosing not to patent SpaceX rocket engines because it would force him to document how they work. Instead they are just keeping the designs secret. So your desire to not have patents used are advocating for what Elon Musk does.