Topic: Free speech is free data; free data is free speech. - page 3. (Read 4554 times)

Because I don't want to go rifling through a bunch of random biased websites, can you concisely tell me why IP laws stifle innovation?

Copyrights, trademarks and patents are not in any way ownership of the idea. Like ownership, these different laws grant you a monopoly on certain rights, but it is quite distinct from ownership.

IP laws do stifle innovation.  see http://goo.gl/L3LYi

and of course, it isn't theft... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4

Oh, insurance companies will accept people with pre-existing conditions... They just dredge it up when it's time to pay because modern insurance companies BOTH assess coverage AND take the financial risk.

In theory, even people with pre-existing conditions should be able to buy insurance against having it in the future. I will now employ the standard excuse of blaming the state for regulating insurance to death. 

But your views of not having IP protection would directly result in a lack of innovation in the drug and pharmaceutical world.  How else am I supposed to take that besides you supporting a lack of innovation in the medical world?

Gene patents are really silly.

The barrier to entry for music production being broken down is really true.  You don't need more than a few hundred dollars worth of hardware and software to make an album that really sounds pretty good.  Add a couple of grand, and you're almost at the same level as professional, and the big bucks are only spent on mixing it all down properly.

But that said, what about people who just like to record music at home, then sell it on the internet.  Do they just take donations?  Or forget about making any money from music at all?  FWIW, I'm one of those people.  Terrified of playing any sort of music in front of people, but many people love listening to it, so I record it, and sell albums online.  In your scenario, with no IP, I would have no way to make any money off of my music.


I enjoy the average Hollywood blockbuster, myself.  I'm not sure why there's always so much hate piled on them.  I enjoy them a heck of a lot better than most low-budget films with poor quality acting and cheesy special effects.  I would surely miss the caliper of Hollywood movies and TV shows were IP protection to go to the wayside.

I'd like to hear more about how most of the cost of drugs is because of the government.  And even if the government is the cause of 90% of the cost of drugs, that 10% is still going to be billions of dollars that someone has to pay, or the research isn't going to get done.

Don't put words in my mouth. I never said I'm ok with no new drugs being developed. I just said it's your business what you do with your stuff (physical, not ethereal). Me knowing how you did it and then acting based on that knowledge, should not be punished. That's a violation of speech, a violation of property rights and a violation of my person (you may imprison me if we disagree, merely for disagreement sake).

I'll respect your opinion if you respect mine. Me knowing something about you and yours and then doing something about it is not tantamount to theft and piracy. It isn't proportional punishment.

It's the arbitrary nature of it that really started breaking down my defenses on this (yes, I used to be vehemently pro-IP.) Most people in today's society would argue for a time limit on an artist holding a claim to their music/imagery/etc. But how long? And for that matter... why a limit at all? If I dig a bit of gold out of the ground, I and my descendents can bequeath it down the family line for centuries. Why not IP? Questions like that arose when I started trying to logically attack the premises of the anti-IP crowd, and forced me to conclude that, at the very least, ideas are in a completely different category than physical property.

The bottom line is that the government's war on piracy will be about as successful as its war on drugs. Once government gets involved, it's bound to make more problems than it solves. SOPA, for example, will eventually be used for far more sinister purposes than just fighting piracy.

Although I don't approve of piracy personally, I also don't believe that anyone has the moral right to force me to pay (taxes) to support police that protect their property - no matter if it's intellectual or physical or whatever. Rather, it is every property owner's duty to pay the cost of defending ownership, NOT the non-owners of that property. If it was, that would be slavery!

This is one more reason I like Bitcoin. A Bitcoin is my property not because of some complex philosophy, not because government says it is so, not because goons will come attack you if you take it, but because *you don't have my private key*.

If Microsoft can stop people from pirating Windows good for them, if they can't that's their problem. But that's Anarchy, and anarchy is where technology is slowly taking us - get used to it.

There are a number of articles out there presenting powerful arguments as to how the concept of "intellectual property" actually stifles innovations. (I may dig some of my favorites up if anyone actually cares to view them, and time permitting.) The two biggest objections people first think of to eliminating IP are movies and drugs. But with drugs, most of the cost is actually artificially inflated via the government. And as far as movies, well, I don't know that I'd call most of what Hollywood puts out "innovative."

But beyond that is the principle, which is far more important than one or two industries. Is it right to punish people for copying something that the designer allowed them to see? If the answer is no, but we do it anyway because "society benefits," then I would just agree to disagree... many wrongs can be committed in the cause of benefiting society. (If the answer is supposedly "yes", regardless of the societal benefit/detriment, then I think there might be some trouble defending that view.)

My view: following the logical, consistently correct course of action always ultimately leads to mankind's betterment as a whole, even if in the short term we can't fully see it.

The concept of ideas as property is inconsistent with the concept of physical property which we have absolute rights to. And since I find the concept of arbitrary property rights, as determined by some authority, to be rather disturbing, I choose to accept that the concept of ideas as property is inherently flawed, and ultimately a detriment for mankind.

How do you feel about corporations holding patents on genes everyone have? They didn't develop a new gene they just found one that already existed in nature but since their medicine targets that gene no one else can do research on it without licensing the rights to a naturally occurring protein. Intellectual property laws are tricky. How do you ensure people can profit from their ideas while making sure certain things belong to everyone? With the arts in seems that if the artists is good people will reward them. What we have now days is a system rigged to make a few big studio execs extremely wealthy while trying to short change the people that actually wrote, filmed, recorded, edited the product. With the internet the main barrier to entry is removed. You don't need a factory pumping out cassettes and CDs. You just need a website and a reputation for a good product and you can be successful without having to sign a contract with some faceless corporation hoping you get 2% of net. Some people are always going to want something for nothing. The problem is when you think of those people as lost sales. They weren't going to give you money no matter how cheap your product is. Focus on quality and what your fans want and you should be fine. You'll make money on tour and from selling merch. You know, actually working. The days of recording something once and expecting never have to lift a finger again are over. The internet is a great level playing field if you know how to use it.

Ok, I can see that working.  And this assumes that the disease is something that wasn't known at the time of signing up for insurance, right?  What about the people who know they have the disease before signing up for insurance?  Or diseases that are with people from birth?  The insurers could just not accept them because it's a pre-existing condition, and the research would be slower or non-existent than it currently is in today's market.

IP is just another externality, and would be solved the same way libertarianism would solve any other externality: insurance. For a ridiculously simplified example, let's say a group of people have health insurance and also some disease. The insurance companies would rather not pay all these sick people, so they offer to buy insurance for all their customers on the open market. An entrepreneur pays to have the cure developed in secret, agrees to the offers in place by the various insurance companies, and then releases the cure for "free". The entrepreneur now makes massive profits, enough to pay off any loans for insurance trades and also the cost of development.

In effect, people are paying for their own cure, but a free market allows them to easily coordinate. You COULD try to be a free rider and hope everyone else buys insurance, but if no cure is developed you don't get any insurance payoff. This only works if transaction costs are low (Coase theorem), so IMHO libertarians should be working on projects to reduce them. The burden is on us to prove this is possible!

If you're ok with no new drugs being developed, well, I can't argue against that.  Me, I rather like corporations spending billions of dollars on research so I can live healthier and longer.

Yes, of course I'm serious. I don't care if you make a profit or not. It isn't my business. It isn't my risk. It isn't my stuff. I'm not interested in getting involved in your bureaucracy. Leave me out of it. I'll do my stuff, you do yours. However, if I like what you do, I might compete with you in the market. I may very closely emulate what you do. That's what competition does: emulate, simulate, mimic, copy, and innovate etc. All of those things. It's my stuff, and I should be able to make it do and appear exactly how I want.

Your example is tainted. You don't have a free market, so I don't know if those numbers actually mean anything. For all I know it might cost $100 dollars to make drugs. Who cares? Again, stick to the principles. If your principle logically violates another principle, maybe you should be more introspective.

Kind of like how there are various campaigns to bring in donations towards cancer research?

Ok, I get it.  But it won't bring in enough money to pay for the current level of research being done.  Case in point - just look at some of the drugs with higher prices.  Some pills that people take cost $100/dose, and they have to take them daily.  It doesn't cost $100 to produce the pill, but that is simply the price to help recover the cost of the research that went along with it.  Therefore, if the research hadn't already been done, and everyone who is currently taking the pill instead had the option to donate $100/day towards research, I doubt the research would ever get done.  Is someone with some uncurable disease going to donate $3,000/month to an organization doing research for their problem, when there is no guarantee of a successful solution?  I seriously doubt it.  But, they'll probably be much more willing to pay for a for-sure solution that they can benefit from immediately.

Sorry, but the potential for corporate profits is still the best way to motivate teams of people into spending hundreds of millions of dollars on drug research.  Even people with life-threatening diseases will likely find better use of their money than sending it to a research agency that may or may not have a solution for them 10 years down the road.

Seriously?

Do you have no clue of how businesses work?

If I am big pharma, and I want to research a new cure for cancer, then I do some cost-benefit analysis.  Something like this:

Cost to research:  $100M
Probability of coming up with a drug that works:  10%
Potential sale price per dose:  $1000
Potential total sales:  $1.5B

Risk-inclusive profit (loss).
$1.5B x (10%) - $100M = $50M

Now, if anyone else can copy the formula once the research is completed, then big pharma has to sell their drug for less to remain competitive.  Suddenly, the equation starts looking like this:

Potential sale price per dose:  $25
Potential total sales:  $37.5M

Risk-inclusive profit (loss).
$37.5M x (10%) - $100M = ($96.25M)

Suddenly, no one wants to do pharmaceutical research because it's going to lose them money, every time.

So who does research for new drugs if there is no profit to be made?  Taxpayers?  Or do you have something else in mind?

If you cant read, I cant help.  Welcome to my ignore list.

Am I obligated to work for, or benefit society? Am I obligated or responsible to others for their risk taking? And since when is government ever needed for assisting private investment? The government in that capacity is no different than a den of thieves. Do you believe in freedom of competition? Do you believe in a market of free people?

You've probably never conceived of what real freedom is really about, so you fall back on your government to do your thinking and living for you.

Easy, everyone who benefits directly pays the R&D costs up front, kind of like how artists were patronized historically, except instead of one king backing an artist, all of their fans would. If you don't feel like patronizing an artist then don't, but then maybe they stop making that music that you like... same for medicines etc. If there is nobody willing to fund the research, then it doesn't get done. If that makes society as a whole poorer, then there is an automatic incentive for society to improve.