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"I support it only if it's open source" should be a more common viewpoint (vitalik.eth.limo)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/opensource@lemmy.ml
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/51038205

What are your thoughts? Any counter-counter points to the author's response to most concerns regarding open source?

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[–] 11 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Unpopular opinion around here, but I feel that there is a place for IP in the world. Yes, it is a flawed system that is abused by corpos, but it is also a system that can and does protect the work of the little guy. Copyleft has a place, FOSS has a place, and copyright, needs reformed.

DMCA should never have been signed into law the way it was. It limited "free use" way too much and is now being weaponized by police to shirk accountability. Corporations abuse it by buying up technology which would compete with them and burying it. Etc.

My fix:

  • Repeal DMCA. Full stop.
  • Place a requirement on patant/IP purchases that they have to be a material component of a product brought to market within 5 years of purchase else the ownership of the patant/IP reverts to its original creator with no recompense to the purchaser.
  • No transfer of ownership of purchased IP can be made without informing the original creator and giving a reasonable period for them to object. If they object, they must have the right to file the complaint in court to reassert ownership, which may involve reasonable recompense as decided by the court. Also, all clauses in current contracts related to transfer of ownership become void and unenforceable.
  • Any purchases made of patants or technical IP must be commensurate with the market cap of the highest level owner in the subsidiary chain. Nestlè does not get to buy the design for a new water filtration under some barely visible water brand to pretend like they cannot afford to pay what it is worth.
  • Not specific, but still relevant, to patant/IP situations: Forced arbitration becomes illegal and unenforceable. Everyone has the right to demand their case go before, and be adjudicated by, an impartial and uninvolved judge.

I have had other reforms, but they are not coming to mind currently. I know it is all a very unpopular opinion around here, but I am personally an independent developer and I want my tools and the code I designed to be used for the purposes I have designed them for, and I don't want someone lifting algorithms I invented and not giving credit or licensing it from me. I am one man who has a family that he struggles to feed, and I recognize that the copyright and patant protections are, ostensibly, there to protect my work as well.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Copyright in general should be strictly limited to an extremely short time, like maybe 1-5 years. After that others should be allowed to use and expand on it unless you release a new work that expands on it yourself. Trademarks eliminate the confusion about who published it and if you aren't actively using the content, it should be given to society to benefit everyone. This would promote progress and competition. Extended copyright, especially, is only useful for people and companies who don't want to be productive and just get paid for one thing their ancestors/predecessors did ages ago. The original design for copyright said exactly this would happen.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Indeed. I agree with everything you said here.

    Most of my quandary stems from patants at this point I guess. Copyright reform advocates are plentiful, but patant reform is much more rarely mentioned and IMHO is a bigger issue for progress and development of society. The anticompetitive practice of purchasing patants so you can bury them gets deep under my skin. There are so many things that have been invented, problems that have been solved, potential progress that has had the first steps made, that was squelched because some person/company with more money than civic duty realized that it would negatively affect their revenue stream. And instead of developing the idea and incorporating it to make their own products better, they just hide if in a vault somewhere.

    That all said, I cannot describe how happy I was when I heard of some rogue patant whore activists out there coming up with ideas for enshittification and patanting them so corpos cannot use those specific methods to enshittify our world more. I wish I had been able to patant the SaaS architecture when I graduated HS in 2003. Maybe the world would be a much better place.

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