Every time we get one of these issues about IP I kind of feel like we are doing something very stupid.
The whole legal process surrounding IP, the laws, the patent offices, layers of locals laws, international agreements, weird precedences. The enormous legal costs involved in anything IP (especially patents). Having to relate everything to printing copies in a press or inventing something mechanical. It's all broken.
I don't think we can tweak our way into a better system. Copyright isn't the same thing in a world where "copy" is no longer a real thing. The public interest when it comes to patents is not the same in a world where inventions are organisms and software as it is in a world where inventions are mechanical machines. The rate of patentable innovation is completely different. The line between invention and discovery (crucial to the concept of patentable invention) is much blurrier than it was. The moral implications are not the same. The economic implications are not the same.
The legal system governing patents has several big features which suggest it is completely broken. Patent trolls using the ungodly cost of litigation together with single use limited liability entities (another concept that is now broken) to use the legal system without being bound by it. Patent wars between huge companies and the subsequent ceasefires. There is no way any sane person would have purposely have designed a system this way.
It's like having a police force that just shoots everyone when they arrive at a scene. Then some criminals find out that they can walk into a bank wearing armor and threaten to call the police. Obviously something's not working right.
Even in the domain where patents are have the strongest case: drugs & medical procedures, the patent system is very warped. The problem is that it is expensive to test a new drug in a ways that proves it is safe to the authorities. So, a guaranteed monopoly is necessary to justify the expense. But, that research is not invention and it isn't the thing which is patentable. If we want to reward companies for demonstrating the effectiveness and safety of a drug and getting it approved for use, lets do that directly.
I really think we need to blank slate intellectual property laws. It's one of those things that seem both impossible and inevitable.
IP policy is an intrinsic and harmful byproduct of capitalism, like inequality. IP exists to legally protect a competitive advantage in the marketplace, making it indispensable to anyone in the marketplace. every capitalist is incentivized to act in defense of current IP laws, because their continued success in the marketplace is based on their control of IP. considering the people defending IP policy are largely the ones controlling the lion's share of capital, they correspondingly have a much greater amount of power to dictate IP policy in every arena, from the legal to the legislative.
this is an intractable problem. information is just an abstract form of capital. at the heart of it, success in capitalism is about consolidating as much capital as you can. it follows that information will be consolidated as much as possible, and this problem will only get worse as time goes on.
since we all need money to fulfill our basic and higher-level needs, our economic systems directly drive our collective behavior. since capitalism is based on competition, this means our collective behavior is always going to be driven towards individualism. as we have seen, when we have problems that require behaviors not incentivized by the economy, such as cooperation - climate change, biodiversity, etc - we instantly hit a brick wall and find that cooperation is impossible. we see companies continuing to steamroll ahead with oil drilling and such in the face of huge disasters, not because anyone is evil, but because everyone is doing their job.
i don't know what the solution is, and i am not advocating any other economic paradigm over capitalism. but i think we need to take several steps back and ask ourselves if our best heuristic for determining the behavior of human societies is: "move capital around as efficiently as possible." and i'm not even touching the fact that laissez-faire capitalism optimizes for inequality.
chicago and austrian school commenters: come at me, bro.
The whole legal process surrounding IP, the laws, the patent offices, layers of locals laws, international agreements, weird precedences. The enormous legal costs involved in anything IP (especially patents). Having to relate everything to printing copies in a press or inventing something mechanical. It's all broken.
I don't think we can tweak our way into a better system. Copyright isn't the same thing in a world where "copy" is no longer a real thing. The public interest when it comes to patents is not the same in a world where inventions are organisms and software as it is in a world where inventions are mechanical machines. The rate of patentable innovation is completely different. The line between invention and discovery (crucial to the concept of patentable invention) is much blurrier than it was. The moral implications are not the same. The economic implications are not the same.
The legal system governing patents has several big features which suggest it is completely broken. Patent trolls using the ungodly cost of litigation together with single use limited liability entities (another concept that is now broken) to use the legal system without being bound by it. Patent wars between huge companies and the subsequent ceasefires. There is no way any sane person would have purposely have designed a system this way.
It's like having a police force that just shoots everyone when they arrive at a scene. Then some criminals find out that they can walk into a bank wearing armor and threaten to call the police. Obviously something's not working right.
Even in the domain where patents are have the strongest case: drugs & medical procedures, the patent system is very warped. The problem is that it is expensive to test a new drug in a ways that proves it is safe to the authorities. So, a guaranteed monopoly is necessary to justify the expense. But, that research is not invention and it isn't the thing which is patentable. If we want to reward companies for demonstrating the effectiveness and safety of a drug and getting it approved for use, lets do that directly.
I really think we need to blank slate intellectual property laws. It's one of those things that seem both impossible and inevitable.