If they are stealing someone else's product, there are adequate laws against theft to prosecute them under.

But if they have only had the same thought, or even reproduced something based on a thought someone else had earlier - that is not theft... that is the point.

I know, I hear the howls! Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, and it may be a serious knot in someone's panties, but it must not be considered a crime! The crime is considering a thought to be property! Eliminating the concept of intellectual "property" eliminates that crime.

As I mentioned in an earlier post with regard to the broken academic review systems which are built around intellectual property concepts - existing models built on those concepts will no longer function. But new and better institutions based on equity, respect, justice will emerge to replace them.

How do you protect profits to cover R&D costs? You don't! Why should you!

Without intellectual property law holding everyone hostage, company A will adapt their business model to compete in a level marketplace. Their products will be developed and priced according to their merit and value. If they decide to invest a million bucks into development, they give it their best shot and take their chances! They succeed or they go out of business, like everybody else.

And it is worth pointing out, they can still make proprietary products! If they have a killer idea that has not entered anyone else's head yet they can adequately black box the essential parts, or license the product without selling it... they simply cannot prohibit the other 3 billion humans on the planet from thinking about it and doing it themselves!

Look, obviously I don't have all the answers, but I have many years experience in my engineering profession, including lots and lots of development specifically avoiding IP concepts - full disclosure at every step... it works, better! But more importantly, it creates wealth without relying on someone else's loss to offset it... THAT is the point!

<30 years ago the software companies were screaming that free software would destroy the industry! Releasing the source code would be the end! The sky would fall!

It didn't and you and I are carrying on this conversation in a forum that exists only because of free software, typing our replies on systems running free software on liberated hardware (at least in my case), both of which are many times better than could have been imagined 30 years ago! Whole billion dollar companies and new business models have emerged around nominally free software! It is a proven model and it works!

In a time not so long ago, human beings could be considered property. Whole industries were built around the concept! It too, was codified in laws and was more or less accepted by everyone where it was practiced. It was called chattel slavery.

It worked by controlling the production of the owned slaves for the benefit, or profit of the owner. It was law, it was legal.

When some became a little uncomfortable with the thought of what that really meant, and movement toward abolishing it began, those companies and interests that relied on it said the same thing - How will we profit? How will our interests be protected? How will we recoup our investment?

When that particular bad law was abolished many of those interests went out of business - and rightfully so. Some adapted and survived, in very different form.

The business models changed... radically, but for the better.

Chattel slavery law worked by delivering the production of the slaves to the marketplace and returning the profit to the owner. Intellectual property law works by restraining the production of potential competitors from the marketplace, for the benefit of the "owner". They are both property law and both are equally vile concepts.

Well, we have to start somewhere...

I am sure someone said the same thing about slavery.

I disagree.

Isn't this a contradiction to your previous point? What would you say if another company snuck into their headquarters (physically or through the web) and stole their proprietary designs so they could make their own? After all, it's just an idea, they can't own it, right? So it's not being stolen, it's being liberated! So you believe in proprietary designs, but only until somebody else finds out about it, at which point it becomes fair game and no foul play has occurred? What do you think about NDAs? What about people violating those NDAs? Are they just liberating more free ideas?


They're not even remotely similar. Ideas aren't alive, they don't have feelings, thoughts of their own, and they're not being forced to do something against their will. You're comparing apples to, well...slavery.

It's worth noting that slavery did not disappear, it's still alive and well. It has simply moved out of the limelight to third world countries. Slaves are still out there, producing cheaper-than-dirt products, which are then sold in stores in first world countries for cheap, where it undercuts the competition and leads to respectable businesses filing bankruptcy and other, less respectable businesses thriving off of the misfortune of others.

Well, except that gaining illegitimate access to somebody's belongings and taking them is literal theft. Let's say the idea is recorded in a written document or some other medium. If you "sneak" into corporate headquarters and take an irreplaceable material object you are breaking potentially a whole slew of laws. Where IP laws are most appropriate in my opinion is in cases where material things are copied, not taken. That's where you need the law to take abstracts like ideas into account for the discussion to make sense. It is still unambiguous theft (or copyright infringement or whatever) and I don't think anybody can argue that point.

It becomes less clear when you cannot prove a link between the plaintiff and the defendant. Patent laws introduce literal ownership over ideas, or rather, the ideas of ideas, which makes purely coincidental concurrent development impossible. I do not think it's fair that whoever gets to the patent office first has carte blanche to oppress anybody who has the same idea as they did. There should always be a presumption of innocence. You want to accuse someone of stealing from you, you have to demonstrate when, how and why. If you can't - then as far as the law is concerned that person didn't steal from you. This is the predominant legal model in the West for good reason - to protect innocent people. It means that more guilty people get off scot-free, but I think everybody can agree it's a fair trade-off. Ideally a well funded special court should replace the patent system and blanket IP laws instead of treating everybody as if they were guilty by default.

You can of course not always prove that someone stole from you and it will lead to good people being shafted by the system, but it takes power away from entities that really can't be trusted with it and people will have a fighting chance when they believe their ideas have been stolen. I'm not saying this is necessarily a golden solution, in fact I don't think such a thing exists or we wouldn't be talking about this. It doesn't take into account every side of the issue, but for unannounced/unreleased projects I think it is an ok start.