--On Sunday, November 10, 2013 6:40 PM -0800 Jim Bell wrote:

Can we all agree that if a 'patent system' were implemented by 'voluntary-ist' methods, that doesn't involve government-initiated force, that would solve the problem:  Those that agreed with copyrights/patents would buy only from stores that specialize in copyright/patent-honoring products/manufacturers; others would buy from all stores, including those that sold non-copyright/patent-honoring products.     Jim Bell

I can agree with that ^-^

I cant see any rational player voluntarily opting to honor a grossly abused ideas monopoly concept that only a force monopoly form of government could even pretend to enforce. You know how many companies in China had a history of laughing in the face of western "IP" and just cloning whatever they wanted. Yep thats what it looks like, and its a good thing for human progress. I hope when they overtake the US in economic and geo-political strength in the next few decades they say "screw that" and treat it as a strongly defensible ethical stance, and not pay lip service to the WIPO bully tactics. I mean the best you could say is put a donate link in the doco if you want to pore through the list of starving former patent trolls, small investors, and IP luddites who are climbing over each other to claim to be first to have thought of the 1,000,000 stupid and overlapping "xor cursor" grade things that went into making the given product. Or just skip. Let the market choose, thats a nice euphamism for it shriveling and dieing. Adam On Mon, Nov 11, 2013 at 02:56:50PM +0100, rysiek wrote:

Dnia poniedziałek, 11 listopada 2013 00:08:51 Juan Garofalo pisze:

...

--On Sunday, November 10, 2013 6:40 PM -0800 Jim Bell

wrote:

...

Can we all agree that if a 'patent system' were implemented by 'voluntary-ist' methods, that doesn't involve government-initiated force, that would solve the problem: Those that agreed with copyrights/patents would buy only from stores that specialize in copyright/patent-honoring products/manufacturers; others would buy from all stores, including those that sold non-copyright/patent-honoring products. Jim Bell

I can agree with that ^-^

Perfect. Let the market sort it out. I love it. :)

-- Pozdr rysiek

I previously suggested that there could indeed be a voluntary-ist system to replace our existing patent system.  Yes, an ideal kind of this system would have to be far more selective in 'granting' (e.g., "approving") patents.  (perhaps only 20% of the current rate of granting would be allowed, possibly less.) There might even be competing such 'patent'-certification organizations.

(preamble: I'm not a libertarian, and I'm all for statist solutions to actual _res publica_: things in the commons that are the responsability of nobody in particular but to the benefit of everyone. I just don't think patents solve a problem that actually exists or needs fixing.) What's wrong with the voluntary-ist system, to me, is subtle. On the face, it seems great; abolish "patents" as such and let people patronise systems that certify patents and inventor-hood. What I see as being wrong here is that without certification, people essentially tend to do this already, and when they don't you can't win them over anyway. This is the "Piracy is good" argument; someone who would ever have been a customer anyway if given the opportunity not to be, will generally be, and those who won't be customers if they can avoid being customers will never or rarely be. To put that bluntly; people will choose the product of an inventor if it's not-shit and fairly priced/available. If they don't, it's either a great idea compromised by stupid design, or it's crippled by price or availability. People like to patronise the creators of good things; we have the success of things like flattr and gittip to show for that online, and the full caps of buskers worldwide in meatspace. People buy products all the time that are generally shittier than the competition because they have a brand name on them that people either like or associate with status; take Apple as a key example. This is the argument behind the Pirate Party movement's general agreement that trademarks are a net benefit to creativity whereas patents and most aspects of copyright are merely a tax on creativity. It's more important to know who created something than to allocate a monopoly to that person over the outputs of their creativity. Coming back to the voluntarist system, while there's nothing outwardly wrong about it, I think it would appear to "work" inasmuch as people would buy from the inventors, but not because of certifying bodies and voluntarist cartels. It would work because that's what people would do anyway given a robust way to know where to attribute their gratitude and patronage for a thing well-invented. So I suggest rather than a cartel, that the certification bodies do *only* that, and not enforce something on the purchase and sale of products outside of that role. They should provide a way for people to see who is generally believed to have created a good thing (whether music, products, services or code), and provide certification platforms for people to trust that they're delivering credit and money the right way, and then butt out and let people get on with free association, trade and communication. I personally believe that in such a system, if an inventor loses out to competition for a thing well-made, it's either because the final product created by the otherwise bright inventor sucks, or it's an edge case where the costs of development remain high (the justification given for creating patents, though not the real reason they were introduced). In such cases, there are much better (usually statist!) methods of encouraging inventors to invent than creating a state-enforced monopoly on production and sale of derived products, such as research grants and/or start-up investment programmes. On Tue, 12 Nov 2013 01:55:47 -0800 (PST) Jim Bell wrote:

From: Adam Back

To: rysiek Cc: cypherpunks@cpunks.org Sent: Monday, November 11, 2013 7:31 AM Subject: donate to a starving patent troll? nah, skip (Re: patents in a free society (Re: Brother can you help a fiber?))

...

I cant see any rational player voluntarily opting to honor a grossly abused ideas monopoly concept that only a force monopoly form of government could even pretend to enforce. 

I think that a large part of the problem (even for libertarians such as myself) is that we have trouble imagining a non-statist solution to problems.  We are so used to the idea of a government doing things (even if done badly, or things that shouldn't be done at all) that it's difficult to construct a replacement that is consistent with libertarian principles.  I previously suggested that there could indeed be a voluntary-ist system to replace our existing patent system.  Yes, an ideal kind of this system would have to be far more selective in 'granting' (e.g., "approving") patents.  (perhaps only 20% of the current rate of granting would be allowed, possibly less.)   There might even be competing such 'patent'-certification organizations.  Stores might certify that they will buy only from companies that, themselves, certify that they do not violate any of the voluntary-ist patents.  Marks on the goods will announce those certifications. Companies that manufacture such certified products might also certify that they will refuse to sell their products to stores that do not limit themselves to such certified products. Any consideration of this kind of system will have to deal with the existing, status-quo (government managed) patent and copyright system.  Even if 80% of existing granted patents were improperly granted, that means that 20% are meritorious.  Now, I suppose that there might be some people who simply don't believe in any form of ownership of patents and/or copyrights.  But I suspect that most people would be willing to conform their buying to a voluntary system, IF frivolous patents are not granted, or they are subsequently 'un-granted' based on some sort of challenge mechanism. And, if large stores decide to limit their stock to such conforming products, it might be somewhat difficult to market goods that are not conforming. I realize that such arrangements may be hard for us to imagine.  But soon enough, we might have little choice but to do that imagining. Jim Bell