[ExI] New IP thread

[Damien Sullivan]

On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 03:56:25AM -0400, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:

> I can only advise to try to approach the problem of IP not from a
> first-person perspective but to start with a comparative analysis of
> efficiency of various hypothetical laws, given a range of plausible

Efficiency at what?

IP laws encourage the creation of patentable and copyrightable items, so
are efficient at that.  But they introduce inefficiencies --
increasingly large inefficiencies -- in the use of ideas, including
derivation from old ideas.

> P.S. An interesting thought occurred to me - compare a society where
> all thoughts of every individual are open to control by other
> individuals (unless specifically protected from external control), vs.
> a society where all individual thoughts are protected from other
> individuals (unless specifically excluded from protection). Draw
> parallels with operating systems that allow any program to execute any
> operations on the code of another program, unless specifically
> proscribed, vs. systems that generally prevent programs from modifying
> each other, unless specifically allowed. Which operating system is
> more robust? This is a good starting point to thinking about the deep
> underpinnings of IP law.

No, this is comparing apples and rocks.  IP has nothing to do with the
protection of "all individual thoughts", especially not in a way
relevant to computer security.  A world without IP is a world where
public ideas can be copied freely, not a world where people can control
the thoughts in my brain.  We're takling about publication, not
telepathy and mind control.

-xx- Damien X-)