Hacker News Reader

Patents are government monopolies created to incentivize inventors to share their inventions so others could build upon them. The fear was they'd hide their IP behind factory walls and innovation would be slow.

Now patents are used by those who don't make anything and often don't even invent anything in order to blackmail those who do.

View on HN

"Intellectual Property" is the use of the State's violence in an attempt to enforce an artificial scarcity upon something that is naturally non-scarce - information. It is inherently antithetical to a free society and always ends up hurting the everyman (and society at large) in the long run.

When I hear "IP" I now perceive "rent." Rent is drag and is a prime mover in income inequality.

The two are not at all alike, though. Rent is payment made in exchange for the use of a physical, scarce resource. Information, in contrast, is inherently non-scarce.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com