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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

The about-face Silicon Valley has done on this issue in the last decade or two is pretty amusing. Back when Silicon Valley meant Microsoft making software and Sun making hardware, people ranted and tore their hair out over how lack of IP enforcement in developing countries was destroying innovation...

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The two aren't mutually exclusive. IP needs to be enforced in order for our current system to work -- Even the GPL depends on copyright enforcement. On the other hand, if asinine patents and overly broad copyrights are handed out, then it becomes difficult for everybody.

Copyright needs to be enforced, but on a narrower set of IP. Patents should actually be innovative, unique, and original. Copyright should be specific, with broad fair use and protected status for parodies and satires.

> Copyright needs to be enforced, but on a narrower set of IP. Patents should actually be innovative, unique, and original. Copyright should be specific, with broad fair use and protected status for parodies and satires.

The problems with arguments like these is that the are talking about a perfect system. In reality you will just not get such a system, that just not where the insentives for change of the system go.

There are so many goverment agencys, that have some nice intent but ultimilty end up doing nothing (or in some cases to opposite).

Bringing democracy to the third world. Forign Aid helping dictators. Free Trade Agreements that ristrict trade. The list goes on.

Its not the best wikipedia article but I think public choice theory clearly states that these kinds of institutional changes are just not going to happen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice_theory).

Crying abolish as loud as you can together with everybody else that has the same insentives, like start ups, bigger companys that do not have as many patents and political partys that are not in the goverment.

Institutional change allways hurts, or is unfair to somebody but institutonal change must happen anyway.

> Even the GPL depends on copyright enforcement

One could well agrue that the GPL only exists because there is was copyrights. Stallman would not have had all the trouple with the lisp maschine without copyrights. The lisp maschine code could have been used by both companys. Maybe we would all work with lisp maschines now (let a man dream).

>Even the GPL depends on copyright enforcement

I remember Stallman saying something along the lines that GPL is using copyright against itself.

So I don't think GPL "depending" on copyright enforcement is a valid point for IP enforcement.

GPL is just specifically tailored for the current system and would just morph to something else if the legal climate changes.

Without copyright protection, it would be pretty easy to interfere with two of the Four Freedoms.

Without copyright protection, there would be less incentive to interfere with any of the freedoms. Imagining a lack of copyright on software, the two reasons I can think of to eschew sharing are to keep for oneself/one's group an advantage provided by the program (whether that be a better search algorithm or a better nuclear weapon simulator) or to prevent exposure of assumptions made by the software to a competitor/adversary (e.g., avoid illegitimate SEO, security through obscurity).

The advantages of sharing would remain: everyone with more access, a larger number of people to help improve the software.

The pro-copyright claim is that the current system provides incentives for more software to be built than the absence of copyright would; but that's an economic model without experimental validation and not even as reliable as tested economic models (e.g., Keynesian stimulation/damping).

This is a problem with the blanket term "Intellectual Property". Intellectual property consists of many things, e.g. copyrights, patents, and trademarks.

You can be in favor of some without being in favor of all.

Why is an about-face over the course of at least 10 years amusing (I presume in a sarcastic way)?

In 10 years, even crowds of people learn about the medium-term implications of legal doctrines. 10 years ago the implications of software or business method patents weren't all that obvious. Only a few radicals were warning against them - someone sold everybody else on an emotional basis.

"Intellectual Property" in haste, repent at leisure, as Ben Franklin might have written, if he had understood the implications 200+ years ago.

I think that's a bit of historical revisionism right there. Nobody sold Silicon Valley 1.0 on IP protection "on an emotional basis." The companies were just tired of doing free R&D for the Chinese.

> The companies were just tired of doing free R&D for the Chinese.

And thanks to software patents and copyright that's finally over.

Well, since the empirical evidence is completely against it, "Intellectual Property" has to be sold on an emotional basis.

But anyway, well played knocking down a straw man based on a point only tangentially related to the real issue. Thanks for that!

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