Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk would like to ‘delete all IP law’ | TechCrunch
Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk would like to ‘delete all IP law’ | TechCrunch
Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter (now X) and Square (now Block), sparked a weekend’s worth of debate around intellectual property, patents, and
Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter (now X) and Square (now Block), sparked a weekend’s worth of debate around intellectual property, patents, and copyright, with a characteristically terse post declaring, “delete all IP law.”
X’s current owner Elon Musk quickly replied, “I agree.”
I mean, I'd like to get rid of IP Law too....
But I actually mean get rid of, not an "Under New Management" sense like Elon The Musky Husky wants
If they did could we use the Twitter bird or Tesla logo all we wanted? I mean yeah let's get rid of all IP law but get rid of it for everyone. If we want to copy a big corporation then yeah we should do that. Get rid of copyright and trademarks, woo! Publish all that hidden patented material so anyone can produce it. Let's get creative. You think big corps will get on board with all this?
Of course they are both lying. As with all capitalists, they will always use the law to seize greater power.
Honestly, I'm a fan of abolishing IP law too, but for some reason I suspect the implementation of that they support is very different than the one I support
... Delete... all... IP law?
So... just literally make all piracy legal, switch all gaming and tv show and movie production/consumption... to an optional donation model?
Fuck it, why not.
I am both an avid pirate and have a degree in econ, wrote papers as an undergrad on how to potentially reform the DMCA... and uh yeah, at this point yeah no one has any fucking idea how any thing works, everyone is an idiot, sure fuck it, blow it all up, why not.
That would be a-m-a-z-i-n-g. Private game servers, fan remakes of shows and movies, I would be over the moon.
Too bad it won't happen
Wow. A white guy with money has an opinion. This is getting crazy! /s
I hate agreeing with these assholes, but I do in this case. IP/patent law is explicitly designed to stifle competition. At most, it should last a few years (if you agree with the "recoup the cost of innovation" argument). Innovation will be done for the sake of innovation if there's competition though. If your opposition innovates and you don't, you're going to be destroyed. The exception is when they agree to not compete, which is already illegal though not enforced as strongly as it should be.
As much as I also would like IP law to die, I do not think that these two saying such means much.
Jack Dorsey is not in government and worth a 100th of what Musk is worth. And Elon Musk is evil and retarded.
I’ve been on board with this for fucking years. Our IP system in the USA is so fucked. It’s like “death of the creator plus 40 years” or something and then Disney lobbies to increase it further to protect the mouse.
Let me make Mickey Mouse shirts and let me make money off of them!
Let me stream Nintendo games without a cease and desist!
"Delete all IP law" say people who have never created anything of any value to humanity.
Be Weird, Download a Car, Generate Art, Screw Copyrights!
Oh no, this is so... good idea. Yarr! Pirate Party approves.
i'd also like to delete all billionaires
This would be disastrous for actual manufacturing because a patent is the only thing that makes it worthwhile to spend a bunch of money upfront to develop a new technology. Unlike with software where you don't have nearly as much up front capital investment to develop something, it costs millions of dollars to get a manufacturing process up and running and in a good enough state to where it can actually work out financially. Without patents, your competitor can just take all of that work and investment and just copy it with the benefit of doing it right the first time, so they're able to undercut you on cost. The alternative is that everyone is super secretive about what they're doing and no knowledge is shared, which is even worse. Patents are an awesome solution to this problem because they are public documents that explain how technologies work, but the law allows a monopoly on that technology for a limited amount of time. I also feel that in the current landscape, copyright is probably also good (although I would prefer it to be more limited) because I don't want people who are actually coming up with new ideas having to compete with thousands of AI slop copycats ruining the market.
TL;DR- patents are good if you're actually building things, tech bros are morons who think everything is software.
Yes, I’m fully aware we want to abolish IP law for different reasons but still, I’m onboard.
Delete all internet protocol law
IP law does 3 things that are incredibly important… but have been basically irrelevant between roughly 1995-2023.
- Accurate attribution. Knowing who actually made a thing is super important for the continued development of ideas, as well as just granting some dignity to the inventor/author/creator.
- Faithful reproduction. Historically, bootleg copies of things would often be abridged to save costs or modified to suit the politics of the bootlegger, but would still be sold under the original title. It’s important to know what the canonical original content is, if you’re going to judge it fairly and respond to it.
- Preventing bootleggers from outcompeting original creators through scale.
Digital technology made these irrelevant for a while, because search engines could easily answer #1, digital copies are usually exact copies so #2 was not an issue, and digital distribution made #3 (scale) much more balanced.
But then came AI. And suddenly all 3 of these concerns are valid again. And we’ve got a population who just spent the past 30 years living in a world where IP law had zero upsides and massive downsides.
There’s no question that IP law is due for an overhaul. The question is: will we remember that it ever did anything useful, or will we exchange one regime of fatcats fucking over culture for another one?
Talking about "IP" as if it were a single thing confuses any debate. Copyright is not a patent, which is not a trademark - they do different things.
Software patents actually should be deleted. It is impractical to avoid accidentally infringing as there are multiple ways to describe the same system using totally different technical descriptions. Copyright for software was enough.
Hold on hold on. Don't mention a damn thing
Can't disagree here, this would be great
It's not a surprise that all these techbros who want to steal everything and feed it into their AI machines without paying a single fucking cent to the original creators all the sudden want to get rid of IP. They can lead by example by submitting their IP into the public domain.
Or maybe they're just massive frauds?
Well a billionaire commanded we argue about copyright law. I guess we need to expend our energy and build enough momentum so that Musk can grab more power during the turmoil.
Trumpers did their part by arguing about free speech. Time to tap into our issues with IP laws and help Musk too!
This isn’t as forward thinking as you’d want it to be.
For as much as they are abused, “IP laws” protect small and individual inventors, writers, composers, etc.
With no patent, copyright or trademark protections the billionaires will own or bury everything.
What is needed is to bring the laws back to their intended purpose.
I think ip laws are important but need to be changed. One example are things that are funded by tax dollars. They can’t own the ip of something we funded even if partially funded. Maybe let them hold the ip until they recoup their cost.
I also think that it is OK for companies to have ip, but it needs to be shorter. Like, they get 10 years or they earn 10x their cost on developing it.
Im not saying my exact ideas are perfect, but just an example of how ip should not last for as long as it does.
Musk is out to delete all laws that don't benefit him, and replace them with harsh private rules that are not accountable to the people.
The current US trade war is the perfect opportunity for some other country or countries to "right-size" their IP laws.
Hollywood wanted "lifetime plus 900 years" or whatever. So, whenever the US negotiated a trade deal it said "you only get tariff-free access to our markets if you give Hollywood lifetime plus 900 years in your country too."
With section 1201 of the DMCA this also meant that other countries had to accept that you could only repair your John Deere tractor if you paid Deere for the privilege. Or that HP could prevent you from using any ink but theirs in your printer, allowing them to make printer ink the most expensive liquid on the planet.
If the US is no longer abiding by the terms of their trade agreements, other countries should no longer honor these absurd IP treaties.
Now that it interferes with me I'm against it. As soon as it's absence causes me any grief I'll be for it again.
Avoiding tax loopholes and fair taxation for billionnaires could also be considered. Just saying. Otherwise I think that the idea of deleting all IP laws is just wishful (and naive) thinking, assuming people would cooperate and build on each other’s inventions/creations.
Given the state the world is currently in, I don’t see that happening soon.
That's probably better than what we have now, but still very short of ideal. Here's my proposition:
- keep trademark law as-is
- cut patents to 5-7 years, with a one-time extension if the holder can demonstrate need
- cut copyright to 14 years (original 1790 Copyright Act duration), with a one-time explicit extension, approved based on need
- have existing patents and copyright expire at their original term, the above (for works patented/copyrighted within the term), or half the above (for works copyrighted outside the term), whichever is shorter
That would solve most of the problems while keeping the vast majority of the benefits.
Good. I don't like them but clearly IP law is a net negative on our society and peoppe have been argueing against it forever now.
If Elon agrees with anything… run.
Disney vs the tech brats. Jumbish, bring me the popcorn
Yeah bullshit they want to delete IP law. Go ahead and copy Square, Xhitter, Tesla, SpaceX, etc and watch them explode.
Isn't Hollywood going to unleash armies of lawyers on them?
The only sensible thing either of these two have ever said. All knowledge belongs to all humankind.
Interesting considering the lack of IP law is going to become Tesla's downfall.
No IP laws for them and the death penalty for us.
Honestly at this point, poor people have no form of IP protection whatsoever, even before chat GPT it was commonplace for megacorps to just take other peoples work and profit from and now that LLMs are here its outright routine. So why keep that shit when it only benefits the rich.
Good luck bozos
I see someone read "Chokepoint Capitalism" 3 years later.
Hey, the broken clock's right!
IP law always had a built-in scale pronlem. Without a registration-required copyright model, and probably some sort of mandatory licensing rate system, the sheer logistics of finding and arranging rights made a lot of business models inpractical. (For example, why aren't modern bookstores just print-on-demand kiosks, or streaming services have All The Content? In large part because it would cost thousands to track down owners and negotiate terms for $1.87 in royalties multiplied by every item in the catalog.)
This was ignorable for a long time, or even a commercial advantage for firms with access to large, pre-negotiated catalogs. The AI boom created a surprise market of non-incumbents who need to get access to a lot of IP in a streamlined manner.
If we open the door for bulk IP clearance to grant the AI bubble a stro ger legal footing, it can also allow other, potentially more interesting business ideas to slip through.
I think Disney might have a few things to say about that.
Along with every other film studio, record company, publisher, video game studio…
…engineering firm, architecture firm…
…pharma company, law firm…
I'd be in favor of a phase out of IP law. It would probably require a LOT more public investment in the arts and sciences. But public funding would lead to public ownership, so society would benefit on the whole.
No one would be getting rich off of creative works, but we would want to be sure that people will still make a living.
Or UBI would work even better.
I'm pretty much on board with getting rid of software patents as they are absolutely ridiculous, but I don't think we should necessarily get rid of the rest, but they do require reform.
I agree fully. This would be the single greatest thing we could do.
Saying something and putting it into action are entirely different. If he does it, I will personally build a statue of musk.
I'll make Teslas, but good ones, and I'm not a Nazi.
Dr. San lookin ass
The only reason musk would want this is to put his name officially on ideas he bought. Presumably on patents and whatnot.
If we lived in a just world these bastards would be sued into bankruptcy.
I'm reminded of that onion article, "Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made An Excellent Point." on one hand, as an independant musician who has many friends in different artistic fields, we all agree IP law is a net negative for us all. the threat of wrongly being accused of copyright infingement and being punished for it is very real, whereas the threat of having our work stolen is non-existant and wouldn't matter anyway because we're making fuck-all money in the first place. and the fact that we can't legally iterate on existing music the way humans have for as long as we've had music until very recently is just criminal. it makes me absolutely sick
on the other hand, if IP law exists to protect small creators but in actuality protects corporate interests, and suddenly corporate interests think IP is bad, then we should be very worried. i said earlier that the threat of our work being stolen is minimal because we're not making money, but with all this generative AI bullcrap, they're using our art as raw fuel to displace artists entirely and burn the planet to a crisp. it makes me even more sick
It's more complicated, because that conflicts with international treaties.
If those two shitheads said we should drink more water I'd check with other sources first.
Fuck them. I hope they both die for what they've done