Do it.
Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk would like to ‘delete all IP law’ | TechCrunch
Submitted 6 days ago by zaxvenz@lemm.ee to technology@lemmy.world
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/13/jack-dorsey-and-elon-musk-would-like-to-delete-all-ip-law/
Comments
9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 6 days ago
resipsaloquitur@lemm.ee 6 days ago
Nonono, see, they will have punitive contracts with employees that will nail them to the wall if they leak source code.
They like rules as long as they’re the one writing them.
primemagnus@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
“I don’t think so. Whatever is yours is ours, whatever is ours stays ours. Thank you for understanding.”
—Microsoft et al.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
That’s what would happen if copyright doesn’t exist. If a company releases something, it’s immediately public domain, because no law protects it.
GPL
The GPL is very much not the public domain.
bilb@lem.monster 6 days ago
Itsan interesting point that without any IP law, GPL would be invalid and corporations could use and modify things like Lemmy without complying with the license.
merc@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
The GPL is basically trying to make a world without copyright. The GPL basically only has teeth in a world where copyright exists. If copyright didn’t exist then everything would be in the public domain and the GPL would be toothless, but that’s fine because it would no longer be unnecessary.
sparky@lemmy.federate.cc 5 days ago
So basically the bluesky source code is now public domain?
Dekkia@this.doesnotcut.it 6 days ago
I’m fully in favour of abolishing IP law for everyone, ideally globally.
Public domain everything.
floofloof@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
I suspect that isn’t the picture these two have in mind. It’s going to be the same as the demand for free speech, which just turns out to mean “let me be an asshole and you’re not allowed to complain.” This one is going to be “I get to profit off your ideas, but you’re not allowed to use mine.”
Ulrich@feddit.org 6 days ago
That would just ensure that no one ever commits resources to developing something new…
Atropos@lemmy.world 6 days ago
It’ll affect it, but it won’t stop it.
I design medical devices. IP is incredibly important in this process to protect our R&D investment. If IP didn’t exist, we’d protect that through other means like obfuscation of function.
Also if IP didn’t exist, I could design devices that are so much better at healing people. So much of what I do is restricted because someone else has 30 years left on what they patented.
R&D is expensive. Just because you see what someone else did, doesn’t mean you can easily replicate it.
In short: if your goal is pure profit, yeah removing IP probably hurts this a little. If your goal is producing the best product, then get rid of it.
electricyarn@lemmy.world 6 days ago
People famously invented nothing before copyright law.
barkingspiders@infosec.pub 6 days ago
Did you not notice that almost the entire realm of technology runs on open source software largely written by volunteers? Yes your laptop may run a proprietary piece of software but not the servers it talks to, your phone, your apps, the cash register at the store, the computer chip in your kids toys etc…
JeSuisUnHombre@lemm.ee 6 days ago
That’s only true of the too few people that control too much resources
inmatarian@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Not strictly true, if we’re talking about pharmaceuticals or other types of trade information, it would lead us back to a world of fiercely guarded corporate secrets. Here’s your medicine drug, but we won’t tell you anything about how its made or whats in it.
FriendlyBeagleDog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 days ago
Not necessarily? You’d retain first-to-market advantages, particularly where implementation is capital-heavy - and if that’s not enough you could consider an alternative approach to rewarding innovation such as having a payout or other advantage for individuals or entities which undertake significant research and development to emerge with an innovative product.
I think the idea that nobody would commit to developing anything in the absence of intellectual property law is also maybe a bit too cynical? People regularly do invest resources into developing things for the public domain.
At the very least, innovations developed with a significant amount of public funding - such as those which emerge from research universities with public funding or collaborative public-private endeavours at e.g. pharmaceutical companies - should be placed into the public domain for everybody to benefit from, and the copyright period should be substantially reduced to something more like five years.
libra00@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Right, because no one ever does anything for reasons other than money. You definitely get paid to clean up the neighborhood park or help your buddy move right?
Dekkia@this.doesnotcut.it 6 days ago
Nobody does anything anymore and we’ll all just die. Gotcha.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Busting of telecom monopolies doesn’t lead to nobody building telecom infrastructure. And without state monopoly on alcohol production alcohol drinks don’t become a deficit. They just become cheaper and less incentivizing - that’s considered, but you have to solve deadlocks.
Lightor@lemmy.world 5 days ago
This is a horrible idea. Why would an author dedicate years of their life to a book only to make no money off of it. Why would I spend time and money prototyping a new invention only to not see a dime from it as a big company steals my idea.
You could literally write the next Lord of the Rings and another company could print and sell the book, sell merch, and make a movie about it and you’d see 0 money. But no one would make movies any more because what’s the point?
People think about getting an the stuff from companies for free and forget that big companies would benefit most with no protection to the little guy.
yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 5 days ago
The rich want to do it because of AI. That’s it.
They can already take whatever you create wihout giving you a dime. What are you gonna do, sue a multi-billion dollar company with a fleet of attorneys on standby? With what money?
They would certainly just settle and give you a pittance just about large enough to cover your attorney fees.
Do you know why companies usually don’t do this? Because they have sufficiently many people hired who do nothing but create stories for the company full time. They do not need your ideas.
Copyright didn’t exist for millenia. It didn’t stop authors from writing books.
Dekkia@this.doesnotcut.it 5 days ago
You’re right. As we all know people only started to create art after IP laws where established.
Nobody ever made something original just for the joy of it. It’s only fair that a single company has the exclusive rights on a pants-wearing mouse that looks a certain way for 95 years.
Naevermix@lemmy.world 5 days ago
They don’t want to delete all IP law, they just want to delete the IP law which is preventing them from postponing the collapse of the AI hype a little bit more.
HawlSera@lemm.ee 5 days ago
If they wanted to delete ALL IP Law, I’d move to have my Sonic fanfiction officially published.
Sally Acorn’s back in the canon if I say she is bro!
kibiz0r@midwest.social 6 days ago
IP law does 3 things that are incredibly important… but have been basically irrelevant between roughly 1995-2023.
- Accurate attribution. Knowing who actually made a thing is super important for the continued development of ideas, as well as just granting some dignity to the inventor/author/creator.
- Faithful reproduction. Historically, bootleg copies of things would often be abridged to save costs or modified to suit the politics of the bootlegger, but would still be sold under the original title. It’s important to know what the canonical original content is, if you’re going to judge it fairly and respond to it.
- Preventing bootleggers from outcompeting original creators through scale.
Digital technology made these irrelevant for a while, because search engines could easily answer #1, digital copies are usually exact copies so #2 was not an issue, and digital distribution made #3 (scale) much more balanced.
But then came AI. And suddenly all 3 of these concerns are valid again. And we’ve got a population who just spent the past 30 years living in a world where IP law had zero upsides and massive downsides.
There’s no question that IP law is due for an overhaul. The question is: will we remember that it ever did anything useful, or will we exchange one regime of fatcats fucking over culture for another one?
fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 6 days ago
How does genai make those concerns valid again?
odioLemmy@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Make yourself the question: how does genai respect these 3 boundaries set by IP law? All providers of Generative AI services should be forced by law to explicitly estate this.
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I’ve decided all of your comments are all mine, I’m feeding them into an AI which approximates you except ends every statement with how stupid and lame it is. It talks a lot about gayness as a side effect of that, in a derogatory manner.
Would you like me to stop?
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 5 days ago
1&2 solved by digital signature
3 both never happens and when it happens IP laws can’t really stop it
finitebanjo@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Are we pretending metadata on images and sounds actually work and don’t get scrubbed almost immediately?
uis@lemm.ee 5 days ago
I’m yet to see how AI makes #2 relevant.
sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
… Delete… all… IP law?
So… just literally make all piracy legal, switch all gaming and tv show and movie consumption… to an optional donation model?
Fuck it, why not.
I am both an avid pirate and have a degree in econ, wrote papers as an undergrad on how to potentially reform the DMCA… and uh yeah, at this point yeah no one has any fucking idea how any thing works, everyone is an idiot, sure fuck it, blow it all up, why not.
Sizing2673@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Yeah except you know it isn’t going to be that
They’re going to go “yeah but not like that”
They’ll just remove consumer protections and make it so you own even less and if you try to fight it, you’ll have the full weight of the court system to make you poor
Is musk supports it, that’s exactly what he’s hoping will happen. The rich will be able to take advantage of it and the poor will either stay the same or get worse
pupbiru@aussie.zone 5 days ago
also jam in there protections for AI training so they don’t have to deal with those pesky “authors”
HawlSera@lemm.ee 5 days ago
This, he means abolish IP Law in terms of consumer protections.
j0ester@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Abolish IP for billionaires… not for the poor.
el_bhm@lemm.ee 5 days ago
Free for people that already can afford anything.
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
They want to do this so they can feed their ai models.
freely1333@reddthat.com 5 days ago
You can tell China is making strides when suddenly IP laws are a nuisance rather than a fundamental value of the American system lol
interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml 5 days ago
Our models
athairmor@lemmy.world 6 days ago
This isn’t as forward thinking as you’d want it to be.
For as much as they are abused, “IP laws” protect small and individual inventors, writers, composers, etc.
With no patent, copyright or trademark protections the billionaires will own or bury everything.
What is needed is to bring the laws back to their intended purpose.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
Fundamentally it should be an attribution and reward system, whereas currently it’s a false scarcity system.
HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org 6 days ago
The problem with attribution is the difficulty of 1000% accurate compliance.
If you grab 100 lines of code from a repository, or five paragraphs from a story, there’s probably a claim there. If you grab a single word, there’s probably not. But in the middle, there’s a paralysis of uncertainty-- is n lines similar enough to create liability? Can you remember where you saw what reliably? You end up with a bias towards “over-attribution” and it becomes difficult to pare it back. Does everything need a full Git-style commit history? Are we forever stuck keeping a credit on a project because it’s difficult to prove you’ve fully scrubbed their contributions?
Focus on how we pay artists (ideally lush grants) and forget about credit. Maybe establish a culture where it’s voluntary and acceptable-- that people feel that they’re allowed to cite their raw materials, and reuse doesn’t make the work lesser-- but don’t try to use the courts to force people to try to remember and track where they saw something when they just want to create, or it creates a hostile environment.
conditional_soup@lemm.ee 6 days ago
That last sentence is it. IP laws are outrageous monstrosities these days, with folks like Disney getting 100-year long exclusive IP rights to characters and stuff like the DMCA.
gramie@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
But how much do IP laws actually protect the little guy? When a large corporation can bankrupt me by prolonging litigation until I have nothing left, what leverage do I really have?
There are certainly cases where small creators and inventors were able to overcome this disadvantage, but I suspect that they are the tiny minority, celebrated when they do achieve it.
Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 days ago
The imbalance against giant corporations isn’t anything to sneeze at, but there are just as many (probably more) small time companies breaking copyright law and hoping nobody notices. For example, stealing artwork to print on cheap crap that you sell below what the creator is selling them for. If they’re in an area that recognizes that copyright then they’re going to lose every time, and they’re not going to have enough money to drag it out. After that happens artists can recover all the earnings that were made with their work. Without that the artist is just fucked.
merc@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
For as much as they are abused, “IP laws” protect small and individual inventors, writers, composers, etc.
Do they? Or do they protect the huge companies that those people have to assign their IP to?
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 6 days ago
With no patent, copyright or trademark protections the billionaires will own or bury everything.
Trademark protection - yes, it’s very important. Same as authorship vs copyright, copyright might be harmful, but authorship is necessary to protect.
If “delete all IP law” means that you can’t be sued for using something copyrighted, like, say, openly using Opera Presto leaked sources or making a Nintendo console emulator, and that you can’t be sued for rounded corners, and that you can’t be sued for using some proprietary hardware interface without royalties, - then it may be good.
But I think these people are after copyleft.
Still, interesting, how many different people are today implementing what was being discussed in very vague strokes 10-15 years ago. All of it at the same time, breaking everything. I mean really all of it. Signal is one of the common ideas, Musk’s DOGE is another, federation model being alive again is another, and all the ghouls around. A full Brazilian carnival of grotesque ideas. I want my childhood back (Signal is cool, but the rest is not).
tabular@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Talking about “IP” as if it were a single thing confuses any debate. Copyright is not a patent, which is not a trademark - they do different things.
Software patents actually should be deleted. It is impractical to avoid accidentally infringing there are multiple ways to describe the same system using totally different technical descriptions. Copyright for software was enough.
hansolo@lemm.ee 5 days ago
Thank you for the only based take.
IP law is so fractured that individual US states have different laws that can have international implications. It’s a massive hodgepodge that need to be aligned and nationalized.
uis@lemm.ee 5 days ago
Copyright for software is a joke. Software is only copyrightable thing, where mandatory copy is not enforced.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 5 days ago
“Delete all IP law” say people who have never created anything of any value to humanity.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
I hate agreeing with these assholes, but I do in this case. IP/patent law is explicitly designed to stifle competition. At most, it should last a few years (if you agree with the “recoup the cost of innovation” argument). Innovation will be done for the sake of innovation if there’s competition though. If your opposition innovates and you don’t, you’re going to be destroyed. The exception is when they agree to not compete, which is already illegal though not enforced as strongly as it should be.
buddascrayon@lemmy.world 5 days ago
IIRC the original US copyright law as written by the founders was 25 years or so. The extensions on that have all been in the last 70 years or so due to mega corps like Disney.
The problem with Musk and Dorsey is that they want the copyright laws to apply to them but no one else. “Rules for thee but not for me” mentality of the wealthy.
phorq@lemmy.ml 5 days ago
Yeah, the problem was not the original copyright law which gave incentive for coming up with new ideas by giving you rights to that idea for long enough that you can be profitable, the problem is that it’s been extended to the point that the people who came up with the idea are long dead and it’s still under copyright for massive corporations.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I hate agreeing with these assholes, but I do in this case.
I guarantee you that neither of these assholes champion any kind of open access to their end works. Elon famously shut down the Twitter API and vexatiously litigated any number of Tesla copycats. Dorsey is only plugging an anti-IP stance because he’s got a new AI engine out and wants to get on board the “Stealing everyone’s DeviantArt library” gravy train. None of it is remotely sincere.
If your opposition innovates and you don’t, you’re going to be destroyed.
That’s simply not true. There are a myriad of historical examples as to it not being true, from the Japanese abolition of the gun during the Meiji Restoration to German telecoms clinging to copper wire data infrastructure despite fiber optics being obviously superior. If you don’t innovate because you have an economic incentive to drag your heels, and your economic clout gives you the ability to close out competitors, then you can do perfectly fine “innovating” in the field of anti-competitive trade behavior rather than real tech innovation.
What we have in Musk and Dorsey are two men who have benefited enormously from Silicon Valley insider investing and cheap borrowing. They don’t give a shit about other people’s IP in the same way Microsoft was more than happy to pillage code and reverse engineer software of its rivals. But if you think they’re going to apply that to their own codebase and personal economic interests… well…
PunkRockSportsFan@fanaticus.social 5 days ago
vexatiously
Cool word
lightnsfw@reddthat.com 5 days ago
This is going to be used corporations to take away everything from individuals who are innovating (more than they already are). Nobody will be able to build wealth off a good idea again. Which if we were in a society where wealth wasn’t required to live a good life I would be okay with, but we aren’t, so I’m not.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
Maybe. That’s certainly their intent. I could also see it working the other way though. No more patent trolls or companies hoarding good ideas.
HawlSera@lemm.ee 5 days ago
Right? There’s no reason Superman and Winnie The Pooh should fall under ANY copyright, everyone involved with the creation of both ins long dead… The only thing being protected is DC and Disney’s bottom line.
And the fact that Tarzan isn’t public domain is most absurd
Hell it took forever for Sherlock Holmes to be public domain, and the world he was created in doesn’t even remotely exist anymore.
maplebar@lemmy.world 6 days ago
They can lead by example by submitting their IP into the public domain.
Or maybe they’re just massive frauds?
StJohnMcCrae@slrpnk.net 6 days ago
This is of course after they spent decades consolidating power, wealth and influence, while snuffing out all smaller competitors.
surph_ninja@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I’m cool with it. I think we should require almost everything to be public domain. But I think those personally contributing to the public domain should be recognized, and no one should be allowed to get rich off of it.
markovs_gun@lemmy.world 5 days ago
This would be disastrous for actual manufacturing because a patent is the only thing that makes it worthwhile to spend a bunch of money upfront to develop a new technology. Unlike with software where you don’t have nearly as much up front capital investment to develop something, it costs millions of dollars to get a manufacturing process up and running and in a good enough state to where it can actually work out financially. Without patents, your competitor can just take all of that work and investment and just copy it with the benefit of doing it right the first time, so they’re able to undercut you on cost. The alternative is that everyone is super secretive about what they’re doing and no knowledge is shared, which is even worse. Patents are an awesome solution to this problem because they are public documents that explain how technologies work, but the law allows a monopoly on that technology for a limited amount of time. I also feel that in the current landscape, copyright is probably also good (although I would prefer it to be more limited) because I don’t want people who are actually coming up with new ideas having to compete with thousands of AI slop copycats ruining the market.
TL;DR- patents are good if you’re actually building things, tech bros are morons who think everything is software.
CriticalMiss@lemmy.world 6 days ago
hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
nthavoc@lemmy.today 5 days ago
Why not get rid of the patent trolls, the monopolies shelving useful technologies through patent loopholes, the … Oh I see the tech billionaires again wanting to uproot a system because loopholes are just too much effort now.
Vespair@lemm.ee 5 days ago
Honestly, I’m a fan of abolishing IP law too, but for some reason I suspect the implementation of that they support is very different than the one I support
HawlSera@lemm.ee 5 days ago
I mean, I’d like to get rid of IP Law too…
But I actually mean get rid of, not an “Under New Management” sense like Elon The Musky Husky wants
gargolito@lemm.ee 6 days ago
The libertarians want everything for free. Interesting.
merc@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
The current US trade war is the perfect opportunity for some other country or countries to “right-size” their IP laws.
Hollywood wanted “lifetime plus 900 years” or whatever. So, whenever the US negotiated a trade deal it said “you only get tariff-free access to our markets if you give Hollywood lifetime plus 900 years in your country too.”
With section 1201 of the DMCA this also meant that other countries had to accept that you could only repair your John Deere tractor if you paid Deere for the privilege. Or that HP could prevent you from using any ink but theirs in your printer, allowing them to make printer ink the most expensive liquid on the planet.
If the US is no longer abiding by the terms of their trade agreements, other countries should no longer honor these absurd IP treaties.
cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
i’d also like to delete all billionaires
kreskin@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Dorsey got fired from his own company by the board for incompetence.
uis@lemm.ee 5 days ago
Oh no, this is so… good idea. Yarr! Pirate Party approves.
neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
I think ip laws are important but need to be changed. One example are things that are funded by tax dollars. They can’t own the ip of something we funded even if partially funded. Maybe let them hold the ip until they recoup their cost.
I also think that it is OK for companies to have ip, but it needs to be shorter. Like, they get 10 years or they earn 10x their cost on developing it.
Im not saying my exact ideas are perfect, but just an example of how ip should not last for as long as it does.
orcrist@lemm.ee 5 days ago
Of course they are both lying. As with all capitalists, they will always use the law to seize greater power.
dzso@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Musk is out to delete all laws that don’t benefit him, and replace them with harsh private rules that are not accountable to the people.
Tiger_Man_@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
Delete all internet protocol law
Revan343@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
A rare Musk win. Broken clock, I suppose
jsomae@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
Hard yes. Glad to see there’s at least one thing we are aligned on.
veeesix@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
So delete all pharmaceutical IP to make drugs accessible to everyone and save taxpayers trillions?
el_muerte@lemm.ee 6 days ago
“Noooo, not like that!”
conditional_soup@lemm.ee 6 days ago
This is why it’s a mixed bag for me. IP law is kinda important in a capitalist system; if someone comes up with a wonder drug that outright cures addiction or something, you’d want that person to be able to recoup their costs before a bigger organization with more capital swoops in and undercuts them on production costs until they’re the sole supplier of the drug. The hepatitis C cure drug selling for $70,000 is a great example of this quandary; there’s millions of dollars worth of research and clinical trials that went into developing the drug, you’d want the company to be able to recuperate the costs of developing it or else there’s less incentive to do something similar for other diseases down the line. Also, though, $70,000 or go fucking die is an outrageous statement.
Of course, what we have for IP law in practice is a bastardized monster, where corporations exploit the fuck out of it to have monopoly control over important products like insulins and life-saving medications that cost cents to produce and allow them to sell for hundreds a dose. That’s not the intent of IP law, IMO, and that doesn’t really serve anyone.
libra00@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I see the point you’re aiming at, but it’s not little companies discovering new drugs it’s giant corporations (often on the back of government research money) who then ‘swoop in’ to protect their own profits while people in underdeveloped nations die of tuberculosis or whatever because they would rather make money than save lives.
zeezee@slrpnk.net 6 days ago
idk i think our incentive should be to cure diseases with public funding and make people healthy instead of for profit but what do i know
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
The development of new medications should be 100% funded by governments and the IP that comes out of it should be 100% if the government, aka the people.
Governments are the ones that do the investments of projects that don’t directly make money but are good for humanity.
You don’t like that and the hepac drug can suddenly cost 70 dollars
Avatar_of_Self@lemmy.world 5 days ago
In the US the tax payer subsidizes almost all drug research. Between 2010 and 2019 the NIH spend $184 Billion on all but 2 drugs approved by the FDA.
It worked out to about $1.5 Billion for each R&D product with a novel target and about $600 mill for each R&D product with multiple targets.
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10148199/
Or
jamanetwork.com/journals/…/2804378
I’m not sure how much is subsidized outside of NIH but I’d imagine other countries are doing the same.
Why should companies own the whole IP?
Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
The problem I mostly have is even when those costs are recouped most companies fight tooth and nail to keep the prices high and unaffordable in order to line the pockets of investors.
ScrambledEggs@lazysoci.al 6 days ago
Lol we all know trump would put pharmaceuticals on the exemption list.