> prominent intellectual property law professors
These guys are part of the problem IMHO. Having studied some law at
university and then reading all of Lawrence Lessig's works when he
dissected IP law 20 years ago for the Creative Commons project, I was
left with the distinct feeling that "IP law" is ugly, unfair,
arbitrary, ineffective, crippling to the mind, and devastating to
progress and the economy.
I now strongly agree with the likes of Richard Stallman that
"intellectual property" is a grotesque and bankrupt mess that should
be avoided if you want to have any semblance of a mature conversation.
Actually, people training AI have a point. New technologies expose the
silliness of bad ideas we've clung to for three centuries. And the
only way forward is to hugely reform or repeal most of IP law for
EVERYONE.
The truth is that long before the Statute of Anne "copyright" has its
roots in censorship and political control. We used to burn the
printers of "seditious works" on pyres of their own books in St James'
square in London.
Much of "IP law" still functions the same today but hidden behind a
cover story about "protecting creators".
I now mentally substitute the phrases "intellectual property" with
"coercive control of information" (CCI).
CCI gets to the nub of power relations instead of pretending we have
nice IP "laws" that are applied uniformly. In reality copyright,
patents and trademarks have become tools of censorship and denial for
those with money, and they do almost nothing to protect individual
creators. Things like the DMCA are simply monstrous. If we can't
reform and enforce it to actually protect creators it's time to
scrap the whole rotten show in my opinion.
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