Should Intellectual property be abolished? (Jack Dorsey's, Musk's and others' point of view)
Yesterday evening I opened Techcrunch and the headline caught my eye:
Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk would like to ‘delete all IP law’
(The original Tweet is here and you can read many opinions there.)
About a week ago people were arguing about the ownership rights of Ghibli and it seems that the discourse about what belongs to whom and who has/doesn’t have the right to what is still going on.
How do you see the protection of artwork and rights in the world of AI?
To cancel/not to cancel IP Law?
My personal take…
I don’t think IP laws are useles. I didn’t really care about these things until I took a two-semester course on copyright law in my third year of college and I started to understand that it gives value to works and the meaning of creating.
If everyone could steal what someone else had done, the original person would go hungry. (Business and art are simply two different things.) Without reward, there is often no motivation to create (and that is precisely where we trained our AI models).
While an artist creates an idea, all that is needed is a more skilled marketing person who will take it and make it visible – and what now for the original artist?
Whether someone wants to share open source code or create free licensed music is a choice. It is not a choice for someone to profit from someone else's work without permission. We have a term for it – it is called theft. (In politics, we would call it Illegal privatization)
And if we want to pretend that no one should have any rights to anything, then let’s agree that these AI companies should also give up the profit they make from the code they’ve created and through which they sell creative work. (I believe they would have strong objections to such a stance of ‘shared collective ownership’ and would start defending their own interests.)
Maybe it is time to stop asking whether copyright will survive in the AI era, and start asking:
How to set it up in a way that protects those who create and, ideally, still has the motivation to create.
Replies
chatWise
I think IP laws can be useful, but in our era they are a bit redundant. What I mean by that is, it is not 1500s anymore, if you make something expect that it can be reused, replicated, copied or whatever.
Our creations, come from somewhere, and especially in our times, where information is simply more important than food (metaphorically speaking) having IP laws does not serve anyone.
IP laws however or a better version of them, should exist for startups, bootstrappers and people without backing against big corporations with big budgets. Cause otherwise is just an unfair fight.
But... I need to say that royalties are important here. The creator of something should keep getting credits of any form if her or his creations are reused, copied, edited of whatever verb fits here.
I think the mentality of our ages needs to change a bit.
We should protect unique creations (art or of whatever form).
But not from being copied.
But from being destroyed, misjudged, laughed at or ignored.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@cryptosymposium I think that royalties should be paid out by a collective rights management organization that will be dedicated to AI.
Something like if an AI model (like ChatGPT, Midjourney, Sora, etc.) was trained on your texts, images, music, etc., you could have the right to a share if your work significantly influenced the AI output.
chatWise
@busmark_w_nika yeah I totally agree. But that creates a chicken and an egg kind of situation. Do we really have everything in place in order to prove your creation? And digitally? from a cryptography and blockchain perspective yes we do. But is that adopted enough? Do we use it properly?
And also what are the rules based on which we decide what this Organization is composed of? Who runs it? etc etc
minimalist phone: creating folders
@cryptosymposium yeah, there are many questions and somebody should already work on that because artists will not be motivated to create work. On the other hand, everyone is an artist now. But when it comes to business, original authors deserve reward.
chatWise
@busmark_w_nika everyone is an artist now haha! true. I will be poetic and say, arent we all artists? since always! lets see, if someone works on it. To be honest, way more important problems in this world right now
Graphify
@cryptosymposium I agree, we’re not in the 1500s anymore, and copying is pretty much inevitable in the digital age. But I like how you separated copying from destroying or misjudging a creation.
Also really liked your point about royalties. Maybe it’s less about blocking access and more about making sure creators stay in the loop and benefit when their work helps others build something new, especially in an AI world where influence is everywhere, but often invisible.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@cryptosymposium @hussein_r My point too. Sharing is caring. :)
chatWise
@hussein_r exactly. Cause the root cause of the problem (this one and many more) is not about how easy it is to copy something, but in how appreciated, embraced, used is this creation in the first place. In the era of elon musks, that is the root cause.
Dorsey and Musk's call to delete all IP laws may sound revolutionary to some, but history tells us why complete deletion would be harmful
After implementing strong IP protections, countries like USA and Japan saw development rates increase 5x
In China, 1980s, trademark infringement affected Chinese innovative enterprises negatively. Local companies exploited well established companies
We need "reform" rather than the "deletion" that's being talked about. The current system clearly wasn't designed for an era where AI can be trained on millions of works at the same time. As @cryptosymposium has pointed out, it's not the 1500s anymore. IMO, these are the current flaws in today's IP landscape -
Large corporations with deep pockets are overwhelmingly favored
Overlapping patents create "thickets' that prevent new market entries
AI is evolving faster than what the legal systems can keep up with
Companies (can't take names) have trained and continue to train their LLMs on pirated content with minimal consequences
This is not all, but all I can think of at the moment. I support reformation of the laws to fix these flaws. When Disney lobbies to keep Mickey Mouse from the public domain for nearly a century after making it, that's a problem. When pharma companies use patents to maintain monopolistic pricing, that's a problem. But when individual artists and creators seek fair compensation for their work, that's not a problem but justice.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@cryptosymposium @pranay12 It think that you reported to Meta who trained their LLMs on pirated versions of books, right? :D
But you're right – a reform is needed. Unfortunately, the authorities don't have the time or capacity to deal with it. However, it might just be a matter of time before the lines between intellectual property and ownership rights begin to blur. (The politics of concession work in this area too – and we know well that once you allow something once, the other side will want more.)
@busmark_w_nika I dare not report anyone 👀
But yes, it's true that the authorities might not have the time/capacity to deal with this. Or maybe there are other underlying factors which we are unaware of.
minimalist phone: creating folders
@pranay12 They may take breaking rules as an opportunity to progress. Hard to say how they interpret the law. :D
Hi Nika, here's a direct answer to your question:
Not to cancel IP rights and laws.
My personal take...
What would pharmaceutical companies think if they lose the rights from their "discoveries / inventions"? ;)
minimalist phone: creating folders
@terabitcoins I think that deleting laws would totally erase many many many business models. And when any owner stops profiting, it is becoming inevitable :)
@terabitcoins IP definitely needs a reset. With AI everything is accelerated. The next cure for X will cost a fraction of what it used to. Cost has to justify IP length and sale price. In the next 5 years we will get the same amount of innovation we have seen in the past 50 years. So, as such. length of IP has to reflect that. We have IP so we are encouraged to innovate, not to hoard rights forever more.
@sentry_co go tell that to artists that just earn a small percentage of their creations and get ripped off by ai tools.
@terabitcoins AI has no sympathy, it's coming for us all. So we have to adopt or parish. Better to rip the bandage off early than wait for the inevitable. IMO. When it comes to artists however, their IP is rather strong. At least for what is known as "exact composition". Styles and what not are too broad, so IP naturally can't be allowed, or else everything would overlap. And all styles would be owned by very few people.
@sentry_co the "exact composition" can be easily contoured and that applies to several other cases (not just art). I know that change is inevitable, but it will be hard to end the monopolies that exists on key areas that affects the ones that have smaller resources to claim their legal IP rights.
RealMail
Here: https://youcongress.com/p/intellectual-property-be-aboli is a auto-compilation of the most prominent voices for and against. Thanks to the interesting project: YouCongress.com by @hecperez
minimalist phone: creating folders
@hecperez @ivarsmas Thank you Mike, I had my say in this form already :)
Imo even if it is not enforced or deemed redundant - having it sets a standard that people's work is to be protected, and hence should still remain. I think there are broader implications than just 'law not followed therefore useless therefore remove'.
Same thing with human rights and lots of other issues
minimalist phone: creating folders
@whisk I like the parallel you used for describing it because the lines between things are so thin. Today, it can be intellectual property, tomorrow human rights :)
Graphify
That’s a super important conversation and I’d say as someone who leans more liberal, I see IP as necessary, but something that should be carefully balanced to encourage innovation and fairness. On one hand, we absolutely need creators to retain rights over their work. If we want a healthy creative ecosystem, whether in art, tech, writing, music, people need to feel their effort and originality will be respected and rewarded. Otherwise, what’s the point of investing years into a novel, a product, a style?
But on the other hand, we also can’t let IP laws become tools for gatekeeping or monopolies. Take Disney, for example: their use of copyright extensions has arguably gone far beyond the original intention of IP protection. They’ve benefited massively from the public domain (see: classic fairy tales), but simultaneously lobbied to keep Mickey Mouse locked behind copyright for nearly a century. That’s where things get murky.
In the AI space, I like the idea of collective licensing. If models are trained on millions of creative works, surely the people behind those works deserve at least symbolic compensation, especially independent creators who can’t compete with big corporations.
So maybe the question isn’t “abolish IP” or “protect it at all costs,” but: how do we redesign it for a networked, AI enhanced, remix-heavy world where access and ownership both matter?
minimalist phone: creating folders
@hussein_r These are very serious questions because of course, the topic is serious. I agree with you. I am also for sharing things but also for rewarding people fairly. (Maybe I am just naive, I do not know.)
But if we are not able to "fix" this thing, how can we solve more serious questions later?
E.g. ethics when it comes to cloning, AI & human relationships/emotions, AI decision-making over human decision-making etc. That will be something huge.
The fundamental question isn't whether to abolish intellectual property, but rather: What does enforcement and remuneration look like in an era where IP theft is 1) rampant and 2) impossibly expensive to enforce?
The collective hallucination of intellectual property provides a crucial mechanism by which people who do not produce physical goods can participate in the real economy. This system depends on an enforcement regime that punishes those who take or profit from without permission — which is precisely the real issue we must address.
The complexity deepens when we consider the fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine. In the AI era, it is increasingly hard to know where IP theft begins and ends. What happens when a creator uses an LLM that was trained on pirated works unbeknownst to them... Consider the cascade of complex questions this raises:
Should the LLM maker be liable? The creator? Both?
How do we establish the chain of causation in AI-assisted creation?
How would courts measure financial harm from derivative AI works?
What constitutes "substantial" use of copyrighted material in AI training?
How can individual creators possibly afford to litigate these issues?
Can traditional IP enforcement mechanisms even keep pace with AI development?
What happens when AI-generated content is used to train newer AI models?
Proposed solutions face significant challenges. While I like your idea for a collective rights management org related to AI — it's essentially what Spotify is for music, but artists constantly complain that they're not getting paid enough. Similarly, there's CCC, Corpus by Avail, and ProRata all working on solutions in this space. Yet I presume that we're going to continue to see a power law distribution where a small number of players reap the most rewards, as the IP framework rewards those who can afford to legally pursue infringers, rather than helping independent voices and creators.
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@chrismessina
I think you described it accurately, and the questions raised really are the kind of issues that should be addressed. The lack of clear answers makes solving these problems significantly more difficult, that's for sure.
As you mentioned, the ability of smaller entities (with minimal resources) to enforce their rights and succeed against large corporations is slim.
I understand that businesses have to "make a business", but as someone who is close to the art, I also “sympathize” with the artists. That’s why I would welcome it if large corporations approached this issue more responsibly (I recently read about the case where Meta trained its LLM on pirated book versions and their attitude was more like they just shrugged it off.).
In general, the world is changing, times are shifting, and legal authorities should be able to respond more flexibly to this evolving environment – even though bureaucratic processes will always be behind the pace of tech development. I’ll definitely keep following this situation as it unfolds.