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[andrea]

don't forget the ever extending copyright limit. Mickey mouse will never be public domain.

Personally I don't really mind intellectual property itself, but I feel it has gone overboard. You own your novel for , say, 5 years? maybe renewable once? it gives you time to get it printed, distributed, known and sold, allowing you to profit from your idea.

But 70, 100 years or whatever we have now? it is clear that it has absolutely nothing to do with protecting the author or encouraging creative activities. In fact, if a single work can feed you and your family for generations, it removes any economical incentive for further works.

[UXLZ]

Yeah, the length of copyright we have now is absurd.

[Angle]

That's one of the reason's why (Here we go again!) I'm working on Agora - so that I can bring these issues to more people's attention, and allow lots & lots of us to conference, and hopefully figure out a solution. I know it sounds crazy, but do any of you have any better ideas? If not, THEN YOU MIGHT AS WELL TRY AND HELP ME!

Because I don't think I can manage it on my own. With a bit of help, we might be able to.

[UXLZ]

What the hell is Agora? Was it that strange message board design of yours? (Or was tat someone else?)

[SalmonGod]

Intellectual property would be alright... I still wouldn't like it, but it would be palatable... if it were somehow possible to separate it from employment.  Because as it is, its primary use is for employers to take exclusive credit for and ownership of their employee's work.  The concept of securing some reward for good intellectual work is a sound one... but in reality, it more often results in the very opposite effect.  The only way to prevent this is to make it impossible to sell rights by contract.  As in a person's intellectual work belongs exclusively to that person and can't be transferred.  But that severely undermines the utility of the idea.  I think we're better off doing away with it entirely.

[Angle]

Yeah, that's it. Sorry, it's been giving me trouble lately and I'm stressed out over it.

Anyway, the Idea here is that it's a fancy forum that will allow LOTS & LOTS of people to talk about a single subject, without the subject collapsing under it's own weight. Thus, you can spread information between them much faster, and you can harness a great deal more knowledge and processing power, and thus you can get answers to your questions much faster.

For example, Intellectual Property. You could start a discussion with "How should Intellectual Property work?", and then people can reply with their own various ideas, and those ideas can be voted upon, and replied to, and the best ones should rise to the top. Thus, you'll get lots of answers, along with a detailed break down of the pros and cons of each answer, and you'll communicate the answers to everyone who bothers to read the thing.

[UXLZ]

@SalmonGod: Unfortunately, pretty much everything exists for people to be taken advantage of by corporations in a capitalist world. It's just the way things have developed. As I said earlier, originally capitalism is beneficial but without extremely stringent regulations (which we either don't have or are circumvented) it inevitably decays and erodes. ShadowRun is a very good example of what we could possibly become.

@Angle: What sort of help were you looking for?

[Angle]

Well, ideally somebody who's familiar with Javascipt who can help me figure out why it's not working. After that, just about anything. Help designing the purely static pages on the website, help figuring out whether I should go about trying to hire programmers, or if I should try and solicit open source help, or if there's some other tactic I should adopt...

Should I try and run a kickstarter? Could you help me run a kickstarter? etc, etc, etc...

[SalmonGod]

@SalmonGod: Unfortunately, pretty much everything exists for people to be taken advantage of by corporations in a capitalist world. It's just the way things have developed. As I said earlier, originally capitalism is beneficial but without extremely stringent regulations (which we either don't have or are circumvented) it inevitably decays and erodes. ShadowRun is a very good example of what we could possibly become.

You're preaching to the choir here

But intellectual property is capitalist in nature.  Outside of capitalism, it's a useless idea.

[Angle]

@SalmonGod: Unfortunately, pretty much everything exists for people to be taken advantage of by corporations in a capitalist world. It's just the way things have developed. As I said earlier, originally capitalism is beneficial but without extremely stringent regulations (which we either don't have or are circumvented) it inevitably decays and erodes. ShadowRun is a very good example of what we could possibly become.

You're preaching to the choir here

But intellectual property is capitalist in nature.  Outside of capitalism, it's a useless idea.

Ah, yes, I agree too. So does anyone have any alternative ideas? For myself, I'd like some kind of distributed system, with lots of little organizations that compete and cooperate, and where no organization is allowed to gain too much power. You would need a fairly strict set of rules, and you would need people to put in the time & effort to enforce them but I think it could work quite well.

[UXLZ]

There are advantages and disadvantages to all systems, unfortunately. Capitalism is one that is guaranteed to decay, in exchange for stimulating initial growth. At least, that's the way it appears to me.

About IP... I guess. It's something that I consider understandable because it stops people from stealing other's work (similarly to plagiarism laws.)
It's just been abused.

I'll try and make a larger post later, but since I'm at school I don't really have the time.

[Bauglir]

I'd rather see market systems segregated by applicability. Capitalism is fucking fantastic for the luxuries market, and it'd be that way too for the arts if people had enough basic income that they'd be able to survive even if their work flops, for example. I doubt that there's an economic model that equally suits, say, industrial agriculture, software engineering, artisan craftsmaking, and housing.

For the short term, that means doing things like breaking up monopolies so that we can get the benefits capitalism offers in theory, and dumping public funds into those areas that are critical to our survival as a species, such as geoengineering and space travel.

[Angle]

Alright, that sounds pretty good. Do you have any suggestions on candidates we might be able to influence? Are there any existing campaigns for such we could join up with? etc, etc?

Of course, while we're at it, there are a lot of other pressing concerns. Like Global warming, our increasingly militarized surveillance state, the twelve billion other environmental concerns, etc, etc. Are there any of those we should worry about?

[Frumple]

Sure there are. Good thing people can multitask.

[ggamer]

let's just elect another teddy roosevelt, IIRC he would just go around busting trusts and bedding the hot wives of fat corporate cats

so basically Wacka Flocka Flame 2016