Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Talking about "IP" law as one thing is useless. There's certainly no real-world validity to the idea that ideas are property, but even if we accept the legal concept of it…

Copyright is a restriction that mostly censors the sharing and building of ideas freely. It should be abolished. But it's currently used to deal with plagiarism and to support copyleft licenses. We should have stronger legal protects for attribution, against false endorsement claims, and support technology freedom with mandates for source release for published works and prohibition of DRM.

Patents are just bullshit. We should abolish patent law and just have better social systems for grants and funding for research (although it might already be true that almost all useful patentable inventions are built on socially-funded research already).

Trademark is a consumer protection. It is absolutely essential. It protects people in the market to know that they are dealing with the same legitimate entity when they see the trademark in use. There are cases of abuse or of it being overly strong, but trademark is totally important and basically positive.



Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: