Yes, Intellectual Property must go down. People often think positively of copyright, thinking that no one would support artists if they weren’t forced to, and that artists couldn’t possibly make a living if it weren’t for copyright. I think we are rich enough that if we were to share it properly we could give everyone, not just the talented, time and resources to create art. And I think the talented would still gain advantages by being talented, people want to support artists that mean a lot to them. But to be fair, limiting or removing copyright is not only not that popular of an idea, it’s also the least of our worries, cause it mostly concerns entertainment purposes.
Patent laws is where we need to act. To give a clear example: patent laws mean that excessive amounts of money goes to pharmaceutical companies, This is always defended by saying that they in turn will invest this money into research. The problem is
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They spend far more money on marketing than on R&D, which effectively means that you’re often not getting the best medicine, it means your getting the best marketed medicine.
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When money does go to R&D, the research that’s being done, is limited to that which benefits the pharmaceutical company. This is an unacceptable limitation. For example it is not in the interest of pharmaceutical companies to to cure disease, it’s far more commercially attractive to make it a manageable chronic disease, where you rely on medication for the rest of your life.
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Companies will not share their knowledge. For a company these are trade-secrets that could benefit their competition and if you have to compete obviously sharing knowledge is not in your best interest. But if you want to help humanity forward, obviously you should.
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Drug prices are often excessively high, in part because of the previously mentioned marketing costs that you pay for.
Neither of these problems would exist if R&D was funded by governments and charity. And the pharmaceutical is just one industry that’s taken as an example. The way that intellectual property is holding humanity back can not be overstated. Basically we need to go free and open source on IP,
I’m against the notion that ideas can be stolen. I mean, you can keep an idea to yourself, choose not to share it, but if you share your ideas in whatever shape or form, it’s there for others to do with as they please. Or atleast, despite that not being the case, in my opinion, that’s how it should be. You can of course disagree, but in my view the idea that the first one to come up with an idea, can plant a flag on it and then own this idea, is not helpful. Rather it is limiting, it is holding us back. I think humanity as a whole functions better if we can use eachothers ideas as we please. Humanity functions by copying eachothers behavior and ideas and occasionally improving on them. Like with FOSS, if an idea is improperly executed or can be improved upon, even if just according to some, it is helpful, that the idea can be forked.
Like I said, I prefer to focus on patent law first, rather than copyright law. But fundamentally I think there is no difference.