It feels like every field knows that they're a cash grab without a lot of benefits, but assumes there's some industry that they don't work in where they're needed.
I spent a few years in medical research and realized that ohhhh shit, even worse in this industry.
The whole thing is a big lie.
End copyrights. End patents. The ideal length is zero. There is no case to be made to support them. We need to abolish them outright.
I don’t buy that IP protections incentivize innovation anymore than they prevent it. The reality is that the gains from intellectual property are not distributed evenly, and corporate executives know this. If IP is making you millions of dollars, that is a very different situation from IP just “making you a living.”
Even if you are doing well as a small IP-based business, you’re still stuck paying a premium on everything you buy (thanks to the existence of IP monopolies), and you still have little recourse against IP violations from large corporations and anonymous pirates.
I just don’t get how this isn’t all an enormous waste of resources for anyone but the already rich, or a completely raw deal for people who mod games, remix music, repair electronics, etc etc.
One slight nit: it helps if you don't spread the big lie "intellectual property" (since it's an oxymoron). Someone here on HN told me about the term "imaginary property" which works great, because then you can still use the "IP" acronym.
And it currently costs billions of dollars to get FDA approval.
Basically assume I find a new antidepressant. I spend 2 billion dollars proving it's safe and effective.
How do I get my money back when any drug manufacturer can now manufacture the same drug?