Saturday, June 12, 2010

How bad is IP?

Mike Masnick over at Techdirt has an article discussing David Koepsell's argument that intellectual property is unethical.

The question is the following one:
[I]f it's true that by doing away with the idea of intellectual property, you create greater opportunities for everyone, could you make the argument that intellectual property laws themselves are immoral or unethical in that they are actually what makes everyone worse off?

Thinking cases where individuals or corporations have abused of IP law, my initial reaction was that the argument made sense. Back when I took IP Law, the prof gave a few reasons why there should be IP protection, none of which made any sense. The main argument was that protection leads to more incentive for creation. If this premise is shown to be wrong, then wouldn't it make sense to say that the entire concept of intellectual property is wrong too?

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