cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/27573974
The growing debate over the future of intellectual property law in the age of AI took a wild turn in the past few days when Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter and Block, and initially a leading figure at Bluesky, declared he would like to see all IP law eliminated.
“Delete all IP law,” Dorsey wrote on X on Friday (April 11).
Elon Musk, owner of X and head of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), chimed in by saying “I agree.”
…
Ed Newton-Rex, a former VP of Audio at Stability AI and now a leading campaigner for the protection of intellectual property, described Dorsey and Musk’s assertion as “tech execs declaring all-out war on creators who don’t want their life’s work pillaged for profit.”
Pushback also came from Nicole Shanahan, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, patent specialist and lawyer who served as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate in the 2024 election.
“Actual IP professional here – NO,” she wrote in response to Dorsey’s tweet. “IP law is the only thing separating human creations from AI creations. If you want to reform it, let’s talk!”
To which Dorsey responded: “Creativity is what currently separates us, and the current system is limiting that, and putting the payments disbursement into the hands of gatekeepers who aren’t paying out fairly.”
Notably, Dorsey is Chairman of Block, Inc., the company formerly known as Square, which owns music streaming service TIDAL.
Dorsey’s tweet likely doesn’t reflect official TIDAL policy on the issue of IP. The company’s CEO, Jesse Dorogusker, told MBW a few years ago that he views music as being “undervalued and underpriced.”
One can only imagine what the value of music would look like if copyright protections were to disappear altogether. It would not be a stretch to imagine that its value would fall close to zero, along with the value of other commercialized cultural products, and the value of labor carried out by artists and other creators.
Responding to Dorsey, some on social media pointed out that Dorsey’s own businesses have benefited from IP protections.
“Very easy to say after you’ve made billions off your IP,” one commenter wrote.
When billionaires want to get rid of private ownership of intellectual property, which it turns out they want to use, next will be patents. Strange, most patents are owned by corporations which means billionaires own most, so patents are safe?
If Musk and Dorsey are singing from the same sheet it implies that Dorsey can’t be trusted either. So much for BlueSky.
Dorsey left BS a while ago.
Also, Dorsey was always a piece of shit person and bluesky is just twitter 2.0.
I believe my first impressions of bsky when it finally opened was “oh, it’s like twitter from 2006. but why?”
I know so many people flocking to it, and I’m just not getting it.
True. The people left behind are even worse: cryptobros. 😂
He doesn’t own shares?
IP law (and protections) encompasses:
- patents
- copyright
- trademarks
So as an example, elimination of all IP law would mean I could start my own social media company called “X” and there would be no law preventing it. “X” is a trademark with protections preventing others from making social media companies with the same name. You could too. Everyone could start a social media company called “X”. Further, you could download the public facing look and feel code of today’s twitter, and make your X social media site look exactly the same. The HTML code used to make the site is copyright protected. You could copy that and use that too without any legal barriers.
You could also create derivative works like X brand toothpaste using the same styling and colors (called “trade dress” in IP law) along with the logo (previously copyrighted art) and name (previously trademarked). Nothing legally Musk could do to stop you.
You could legally make a copy of sites to collect logins too couldn’t you?
Hmm. I think the act of collecting the logins would still be technically fraudulent but depending on how the laws are reworked making an exact copy of the site and then possession of the data might be perfectly legal.
Though I imagine if this did become a reality then tech-bro dickflicks like these two would lobby to slant the laws to avoid allowing something like that in order to protect their interests.
Maybe they would blame the user and someone stealing you account is your own fault so just make a new one
And how will they funnel their profits to tax havens. Oh right they mean IP laws pertaining to regular people not corporations.
A fairly unsurprising statement from two people whose combined intellectual contributions are close to none. But they still may impress their idiocy upon a president who bolsters his lack of acuity with an impulse to tear things down.
Why? Since when does Elon Musk give two shits about laws?
Part of me likes the sound of that, well most of it actually, but there has to be a grift here I’m not seeing. What could be their end game?
Their end game is to be able to commercialize other people’s IP without permission or compensation. That is the grift. You make art, music, films, code, etc., they want to be able to platform it for free and charge people for access without paying for their own access, and use it to make their generative AI shit without any cost or liability on them.
Also, I think we do still need some IP laws, but I do hate the current state of there laws. Copyright duration is so overblown now it is absolutely ridiculous. It empowers money hungry corporations litigate non-competitve fan works, it allows estates of long dead creators to stiffle creativity for a buck, and it makes IP’s that are so ubiquitous and commonplace as to be part of the fabric of our modern culture completely untouchable from modern creative work without it being satirical or critiqued without opening yourself to litigation.
For example, Superman has been around for 87 years now. The character was culturally significant in your great grandparents’ day and has becomes a universally recognizable figure in modern culture as well. The Superman ‘S’ symbol is one of the most recognized symbols in th entire world. Yet 87 years after he was created, 29 years after the second of his second co-creator died, and after he has been a part of the public consciousness for literally generations, you still can’t commercialize a creative work about him without express permission from DC Comics and the estates of either co-creator. Also nevermind the decades of litigation between the various comic book company entities to hold the copyright and the creators and their estates to even having any copyrights to the character. And now the split copyright means that the estates and corporation are constatnly fighting over every use of the character, making him more difficult to even get approval to use him in new media. In 9 more years, the version of the character in the original stories will be in the public domain, but it is absurd that he isn’t already. And even then they will still be hindering creative works by nitpicking over which elements of the character’s history are actually still under copyright and which aren’t.
Copyright was meant to allow creative to do their work without fear of others stealing their ideas and undercutting their earning potential for their works. I can support that. But there does need to be reasonable limits to that. It’s debatable what is reasonable. 20 years? 50 years? The creator’s life time? That can be debated. But, this whole “creator’s life plus 70 years” thing is inexcusable. And for works for owned by a corporation, it’s generally longer than the term protecting the creative (95 years since publcation or 120 years since creation, whichever comes first), which goes against the point of copyright in the first place.
I would argue as well that copyright that is not being used commercially should also expire much earlier. If you are writing a novel series, putting out a new book ever few years, sure you can hold the sole copyright to that work for whatever term is deemed appropriate. But if you make one successful IP and never iterate on it than after, say, 10 years, your copyright is void and anyone can pick up the baton and make their own works based on it.
They want to be able to train AIs on everything without any constraint. So they get to make large amounts of money of other people’s work, while the people actually creating original songs and stories get nothing.
Aha, yes, thank you. Now this makes sense. I knew something about this made me incredibly uneasy, just couldn’t figure it out.
“Guys, if you just give me all your stuff I can make a real AGI this time that’ll solve all of your problems.”
I imagine having all that data to crunch would also lead to them having an even bigger monopoly on the world’s compute and energy supply so they can better calculate the optimum method to sell you more crap.
