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.”
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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.
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.