[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by Malkuth

@aohige/anh_minh/vexx: If witnessing a problematic situation and understanding that it leads to a dead end, does not justify taking action, then what does? Divine (or enlightened) intervention? We know where that has lead historically.

Not all actions are equal. There's a difference between operating on someone who needs it, and going to town on him with an ax.

Also the concept of intellectual property is rendered in practice useless.

Of course it's not. Pharmaceutical companies? Still around. So are plenty of other industries relying on innovation. And the publishing industry. And god knows what else.

It's not a matter of belief, rather one of adaptation and evolution. There are new mediums and lawmakers are funded and by certain interests to fit them in their own old business models.

Yeah, and some people use knives to commit crimes. You want to get rid of all knives?

Conceptually this is against the principles of competition and free market,

Fuck those. They're means, not ends.

as well as a conservative approach, which like any other of its kind attempts to withhold progress, and promote useless oligarchies.

So the system is sick. That doesn't tell us who's going to fork over the billions of dollars needed for research when there's no hope for a return.

Before copyright, patent, and all that jazz, innovation had the same pace, and was more accessible from the masses.

When was that? When most people had no access to running water? When craftsmen gathered in guilds for the express purpose of keeping their secrets?

On the other hand, the commercialization of science and engineering has created an array of problems that lead into many failures, financial included. Companies these days spent way more resources into having the legal right to use certain technologies, rather than into inventing new ones or perfecting existing ones.

And you think making it legal to just copy what they need for nothing is going to make them invest in innovation? If all products are technologically equal, if innovating just means doing your competitors a favor, they'll spend all their budgets on marketing. That's what you want?

Same is true for art. Almost all band I used to like established themselves in underground scenes, broke into mainstream for a few years and then either turned back into the underground scene for stable financial support or jointly founded small independent labels. On the other hand, very crappy mass produced artists have risen and fallen within large record labels producing very bad quality music, earning their employers a shitload of money, and the individuals disappeared in poverty.

Live action movies... USA had an amazing underground/independent film scene, almost unknown to its local population and currently crushed by competition.

As I said, art is iffier. Since I'm easy when it comes to music, I wouldn't suffer much on that front. Movies? Too bad, I like big budget ones with lots of explosions, and amateurs aren't going to do those.

TL;DR: I can simply not think of a single creative process, that has not degenerated when money became the motivation for work. Limiting copyright/patent to the individual is a feasible and realistic painkiller the current downward spiral, but eventually abolishing these concepts from any productive process will be necessary to evade the inevitable decay they are generating.

Begging the question, again, of who's going to fork over the money needed to invest. I don't give a damn about your musical tastes. I don't know good from bad when it comes to music, so I probably wouldn't miss the music industry if it disappeared. But I would miss anime. How many man hours do you think go into a twenty minutes episodes? Just making it, forget about marketing it or doing the accounting or stuff like that. And that's not even going into the material costs, or the real estate...

And technology? Nowadays, you need countless man hours of highly educated people to make a new gizmo. Sure, governments fund a lot of fundamental research, but there's already not enough money for everyone. And you want them to fund the next iPhone, too?