cousin_it comments on I've had it with those dark rumours about our culture rigorously suppressing opinions - Less Wrong

26 Post author: Multiheaded 25 January 2012 05:43PM

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Comment author: rwallace 26 January 2012 12:08:47AM 14 points [-]

Not only is intellectual property law in its current form destructive, but the entire concept of intellectual property is fundamentally wrong. Creating an X does not give the creator the right to point a gun at everyone else in the universe who tries to arrange matter under their control into something similar to X. In programming terminology, property law should use reference semantics, not value semantics. Of course it is true that society needs to reward people who do intellectual work, just as much as people who do physical work, but there are better justified and less harmful ways to accomplish this than intellectual property law.

Comment author: cousin_it 26 January 2012 12:25:53PM *  8 points [-]

A funny unrelated question that just occurred to me: how can one define property rights in a mathematical multiverse which isn't ultimately based on "matter"?

Comment author: rwallace 26 January 2012 08:14:44PM 0 points [-]

We can't. We can only sensibly define them in the physical universe which is based on matter, with its limitations of "only in one place at a time" and "wears out with use" that make exclusive ownership necessary in the first place. If we ever find a way to transcend the limits of matter, we can happily discard the notion of property altogether.