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IP problems mirror real property problems | 478 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Just for the record
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 07 2012 @ 12:45 AM EDT
Personally, I always liked imaginary property, because it's the product of the
imagination that's imagined to be real property.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

IP problems mirror real property problems
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 07 2012 @ 01:39 AM EDT

IP is the state sponsored notion that you can own a portion of the infinite world of imaginary things, subject to some conditions and registrations.

Real proporty is the state sponsored notion that you can own a portion of the limited surface of planet earth, subject to some conditions and regulations.

Both kinds of property suffer from the same fundamental problems:

  • If regulators are "activist" or "incompetent" they tend to grant rights to property that already belonged to someone else who hadn't filed the right formal papers.
  • If enforcers (judges, police etc.) are "activist" or "hard line" they tend to enforce outlandish and groundless complaints with a destructive vengance.
  • If there is insufficient consideration of the needs for public use, the laws will be abused to block or demand a toll for common or needed public uses. This was the original purpose of rules such as "imminent domain", which can also go too far in the opposite direction.
  • If there is insufficient protection against rent seekers, cheap well run property will often get purchased by greedy antisocial people who demand exorbitant rent hikes from anyone unable or unwilling to move.
  • If there is insufficient protection against deadbeats of various kinds, affordable property will get overrun by leaches that drive the owners economy so far down they have to hike rents from honest people to cover the losses.
  • If registration is too easy, lawyer driven corrupt enterprises will mass register property they really should never have gotten title to. The repercussions of these massive pools of ill-gotten ownership deeds will then reverberate throughout the relevant economic sectors for a very long time after the registration abuse. Famous examples include the people who used prefabricated cupboard sized "houses" to claim many spots on freshly conquered native American territories, the "tin pan alley" companies that registered US copyrights to lots of 3rd party music, and the past 3 decades of insufficiently vetted software and business method patents.
  • [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Just for the record
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, June 07 2012 @ 09:54 AM EDT
I think the trolls will eventually kill themselves. They want more and more
until everybody sees the issue with that and stops it. If they could stay small
their practices would never be dealt with. But they can't because they are too
greedy.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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