this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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It holds back innovation
How so? I agree with you that this measure will fundamentally change the reasons for innovation. Innovation itself will no longer be lucrative because you cannot be sure that you will be rewarded for your research.
In my opinion, it will rather arise from the urge to deliver a better end product with which one can differentiate oneself from the competition for some time. Or out of a thirst for knowledge that is fuelled by the fact that all knowledge is openly accessible. Or from the sense of community that comes from working together on a project to improve one's own skill and improve the circumstances for all.
Intellectual property protects smaller innovators from larger companies. Imagine if you developed a novel process for solving a problem much cheaper than current methods. Now imagine if you started making some serious money doing this, and it starts to make some noise. What's to stop Amazon from just copying your process, and making it better/cheaper? They have the money to completely down you out.
Without Intellectual Property upkeep rights, any megacorp will just copy your idea and sell it for less at a broader scale, and cut you out of the market.
Indeed.
Obviously, then, megacorps should be abolished.
we should just destroy all the megacorps why going after ip
That happens now anyway with corpos who operate in countries that don't respect IP law, or those that are so big they can just lawyerfuck the creator. It's really just a form of security through trust and social contract. It doesn't truly protect the creator.
None of those motivations you listed actually need IP to be abolished though.
If you're trying to differentiate yourself from the competitors, having IP protection is jn your favor. The large corporation you're competing with can't just swoop in and destroy you by making an identical product at a such a loss of profit until you run out of money.
If you're fueled by creating open source knowledge, well you can already do that. You can choose to release your IP into the world for anyone to use unrestricted.
And for a sense of community, well that's just the second point again. Abolishing IP was never going to make you feel community with Amazon. But having IP isn't preventing you from having community with individuals. You can still work on a project together without abandoning the idea of IP ownership.
But why do we need it then anyways? It is a kind of paternalism of the people and a restriction of their freedom. The argument that IP should protect small businesses from big bad businesses is, in my opinion, inaccurate. It's the big companies that sit on their patents or hoard their licences and make a fortune.
Because those big businesses are only motivated by the profit possibilities.
If you take away that protection then they'll just stop trying. They don't give a shit about any of the motivations you listed. They'll wait for you to come up with something new, then use the advantage of their size to force you out of the market. You'll end up either giving up or trying again at which point they'll just repeat the cycle.
And there's nothing you can do to stop them because now they can be as open and blatant as they want with directly using your exact plans.
Just copy their work then. See? No more Nintendo compaints...
And you're going to compete with them on price then? Even when they can and will sell every unit at a loss until you're driven out of the market. Unless you're wealthy enough to be part of the good ol boys club, you can't afford to play that kind of game. They can.
No, not on price, on orginality. On the stories you can tell about the creation of your product. If everything around you gets automated, created by AI, copied by big corpos and soulless copycats you will have the choice: Cheap and uninteresting or maybe a bit more expensive but with a personal connection. It's your decision to choose.
Do you actually care that much about the creative story behind the latest widget that was added to your new appliance? Are you going to be choosing the 30% more expensive option every time because of that concern.
We aren't talking about art here, very few people give a shit about getting a "personal connection" with their new toaster. We're talking about buy use forget consumer goods. And if someone else is selling the same quality and the same features at a lower price, that's the one that your average Joe will buy. And will keep buying until you can't afford to keep making and selling yours because you can't compete on the metrics that people care about most.
Yeah look at how every single conversation about supporting small businesses went on reddit. Users would rage day and night about the ills of megacorporations. But if you got them talking about supporting small business they'd come out of the woodwork to tell you they're not paying a higher price. And with things being as tight as they are right now, that's a logical conclusion. But it just goes to show that even if you sit someone down and explain to them that X thing they say they support absolutely cannot compete with the price of Y thing they say they hate - they will still side with their pocketbook 9/10 times
Exactly.
Everyone loves to support local independent small businesses when it's convenient. And some people even have the gumption to hold to those ideals when it's difficult. But the vast majority don't care most of the time.
When big business makes it cheaper and more convenient to buy from them, most people will. I'm just as guilty of that as anyone else. When money and time are plentiful I love supporting a local bakery for lunch and a local book store for that greeting card. But when I'm pressed for time or money is short, it's straight back to Walmart to get a card and an entire meal for the price of one baked snack from the local place. And in 10 minutes instead of half an hour.
And the megacorps don't need a majority market share to win. They don't even need a large enough market share to be profitable, they just need to make sure your market share is too small to survive. And once you fail, then they can change practices away from kill competition and back to make money.
I do think it's helpful to ensure that companies feel comfortable spending money on development, but it stifles innovation and progress when we can't open up the playing field after they've already made boatloads of money.
How many medications out there are still printing money when a generic would cost like 5 cents? How many creative projects get censored or scrapped because they too closely resemble some megacorp's IP? How many technologies are out there that can't be openly built upon because some company owns the rights and wants to milk it for another decade?