Libertarian Party of Colorado First to Officially Support Ending IP
Happy to be corrected here, but what I understand is that what we call Intellectual Property (other than trademarks, and focusing mostly in copywriteable material) is a fleeting concept that arose between the time humans invented the printing press and the time we invented digital media where the incremental cost of copying is zero. During that time, IP mainly helped distributors make money by monopolizing physical manifestation and delivery of the IP, by running a printing press or record label or whatever.<p>Before that, there was no distribution of e.g. music, and bands profited from live performances, much as they still do. The work to copy a manuscript set the value of books. It didn&#x27;t stop writers from writing.<p>I believe we&#x27;re done with that period, and should accept it and go back to the historical standard that ideas have limited value (sorry) and the prize is in the execution.<p>We are seeing this already I believe, with obvious things like Netflix and spotify, which are about accessibly and selection, and do not derive consumer value from the IP itself (evidence: it&#x27;s easy to pirate music, why would I when I have access everywhere to a huge catalog for $10 a month from Spotify).<p>Same with &quot;good&quot; cloud business models. Simple example, password managers like 1password give you access to passwords etc. everywhere, and manage security. That is how they produce value, the source code of their apps is valueless and in any event could be substituted with open source. This is in contrast with some software vendors that literally want to charge a subscription just to execute their code. I don&#x27;t see that as a sustainable business model, because it wrongly assumes that the code itself has any value as property. I believe this is borne out by the way the market is heading, and by what already is open source vs what types of things people will pay for.<p>So even if it&#x27;s not mainstream, I&#x27;m happy to see anyone rethinking intellectual property.