• Fleur_@aussie.zone
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    6 hours ago

    I feel like so many people don’t understand the purpose of IP law.

    So someone arranges some atoms for the first time, let’s say they make a vaccine. Now the creator of that vaccine might be financially motivated to sell it for profit. If no IP law existed then the only way to ensure that they’d be able to profit from their arrangement of atoms is by keeping the way they managed to create it a secret. IP law is a social contract that says “hey, if you share this massively beneficial idea with the rest of society we’ll make sure that you can make a profit off of it.” In this way IP law incentivises creators to share their creations with society in a way that everyone benefits from.

    The problem is with public institutions being eroded away by corporate interests not with the concept of IP law.

    Also for anyone coming out with the “creators aren’t profit motivated” bs. Yes they absolutely are. No it is not because of greed. Material success for people who have made contributions is the most valuable encouragement.

    • AES_Enjoyer@reddthat.com
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      5 hours ago

      If you can only understand monetary motivation that’s your fault. Most people who spend 10 years in med school + residency don’t do it because of monetary incentives, they do it because of social and personal incentives.

      Most research actually comes from the public sector (universities, research institutes…), where people work not because they hope to get rich one day through patenting something, but because they get paid to do research. 99 scientists in the public sector will do 99% of the work towards a technology, then a private company will take the final 1% of progress, patent it, and prevent everyone else from accessing the mostly publicly-funded development. For fuck’s sake, we saw this literally 5 years ago with the development of the COVID vaccines, it was predominantly based on university and institutional research that hadn’t been commercialized, and then some companies took all this research for free, got a ton of public grants on the side, and then made the vaccines at an absurd profit. For a counter-example to that, tell me, if the profit motive from private companies is what drives research fastest, why was Cuba the first country to vaccinate all of its population from COVID using state-funded research and production?

      • Fleur_@aussie.zone
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        3 hours ago

        Okay tell me, are you more motivated by the innate human desire to contribute to society and discover the universe, or by the innate human desire to contribute to society, discover the universe and a paycheck that will give you material benefits such as free time and luxuries too?

        Yes companies profited off of public sector work. Strong protections for what a person creates is exactly the kind of thing IP law is. Again, the problem is weak public institutions being eroded and misused by companies, not the public institutions themselves.

        You want to talk about Cuba aye. Lol. Lmao even. Tell me. What’s Cuba’s patent law like. Go on. I’ll let you google it.