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Comment by pwg | Hacker News Reader

IP permissions, i.e., copyrights, are not natural rights, they are instead government "grants" of protection. And protection granted by government decree can also be taken away by government decree.

So no "permission" to release would be necessary if government's modified ther copyright laws to withdraw their granted protections after some "event" occurred.

The bigger problem is not the permission, it is actually finding the code so it could be 'released' once the event triggered. To make this work would require some form of required escrow in order to gain copyright protection in the first place where the code would be held until such time as the removal of copyright protection from it triggered, and then it could be released.

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> To make this work would require some form of required escrow in order to gain copyright protection in the first place where the code would be held until such time as the removal of copyright protection from it triggered, and then it could be released.

Trying to mandate that for all software might be too ambitious to politically succeed in practice - but mandating source code escrow for software used in certain regulated devices - smartphones, cars, planes, medical devices, etc - might be more achievable. You wouldn’t even need to touch copyright law, it would just need to be a product regulation. Of course, copyright law would have to be touched for a compulsory license, but consider that phase 2 and source code escrow as phase 1 - phase 1 could be enacted now, phase 2 saved for later

Throw in a code review.

The easy option would be to have a default law like "you open source your code 5 years after it was created for phones/tablets/cars/etc and it automatically applies to your suppliers as well and the necessary software tooling to get it working. If this requires hardware to program the devices, provide the blueprints of the devices as well".

Then it would be understood and agreed that anyone making software they have to release as open source what was closed source 5 years back. This way I would say that you can't bring the "but the competitors will use this to steal my business" argument.

What you would get in essence is a snapshot of what technology looked like 5 years ago (or a decent number of years people can agree on) and you can fork from there if there's a will to give a second life to various devices.

But really, I don't want an ugly phone because someone decided batteries should be user replaceable like in the old days. And yes, I like my iPhone to be sleek.

Never going to happen, unless you think western governments would like guaranteeing that Chinese tech will never be more than 5 years out of date.

> But really, I don't want an ugly phone because someone decided batteries should be user replaceable like in the old days. And yes, I like my iPhone to be sleek.

I don't know about ugly, but my galaxy s5 with a replaceable battery was barely thicker than an iphone 14 without one: 8.1 mm vs 7.8 mm, according to wikipedia. The difference is actually bigger between the 14 and the 7, so even without removable batteries, iphones are getting thicker.

The GS5 was also IP67 certified, and, indeed, it had no issues under heavy rain attached to my motorcycle handlebars, during multiple long trips.

I strongly doubt that having a removable cover would noticeably alter the phone's looks or thickness.

They don't have to be ugly and plenty weren't.

Secondly, you put prioritise on asthetics over what's good for the planet?

"IP permissions, i.e., copyrights, are not natural rights, they are instead government "grants" of protection"

There's no such thing as a natural right, period. They're all imaginary creations of humans.

Nobody cares about what pmoriarty1 thinks of a word when the legal and political worlds have well-established meanings for those words; meanings that indicate the parent poster is correct in stating IP rights are not "natural" in genesis.

There is a recent movement trying to redefine them as such, led by moneyed interests that would obviously stand to profit from such arguments; but legal history is very clear: IP was never conceived on the grounds of being "natural" or "innate" in any way, but as a device to sustain certain economic sectors. IP is no more natural than subsidies for carmakers are natural.

Yes natural rights are those the constitution recognizes as coming from a Creator and those shall not be infringed.

Copyright and patent are not among those. The Constitution provides that congress can grant "for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"

"Limited times" could be defined by congress to "expire" under whatever circumstances they choose.

I thought we were talking about the European Union

The difference is one of justification: we accord "natural" rights to human beings on the basis of the belief that every person is valuable and deserves certain protections and opportunities (e.g. a right to life, a right to education). Non-natural rights are instead determined on the basis of the belief that they provide an on-net benefit to the general welfare, even if not every person needs them or benefits from them.

You're right, but all EU states are members of WIPO, and their governments can't take away protection of foreign-owned IP without violating their international obligations.

So violate them they should.

Realistically, I'm sure there's a loophole they can leverage to achieve these. The EU is a major party to the WIPO and other members will likely be open to "renegotiating" if the alternative is the EU leaving completely rendering the WIPO pointless. The US pulled this stunt many times with other international orgs and treaties.

> I'm sure there's a loophole

"We would never think about taking your IP but if you want to do business in this region, you must agree to voluntarily open-source all drivers after the product is no longer maintained."

Or:

"Of course you don't have to agree to anything but if you stop supporting the product and don't open source the drivers, consumers can obtain money damages for their devices becoming inoperable. "

The US created WIPO and bullied everyone else to join, there's a big difference in what you can do when you're the one with the world's biggest army by a long shot.

Like what? Having the world’s biggest economy matters much. much more in this case

This is one of the biggest issues with current copyright laws. That what you can do in private while in your own country depends not on what the citizens want but on what other countries want completely undermines the citizen's right of self-determination.

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