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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

I wonder when we as a human society can get past this silly nationalistic idea that one can steal information or technological ideas or designs. The entire concept of intellectual property is a hack to prop up industry revenues; it is not reality. The free flow of information and discoveries is essential to the advancement of the human condition.

It’s sad that more often than not, chinese hackers get this and US hackers do not.

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There's a significant cost covered by the inventor as they carry the burden of trial and error which comes with developing something novel/pioneering.

Now, in the bigger picture, I agree with you that sharing knowledge and innovation benefits the greater good over longer term.

But the thing is, if you copy these novel inventions in secret, close up access to anyone else being able to benefit and establish trade embargoes then its more like stealing than copying.

It's sort of like if Aaron Schwartz sold books to private buyers instead of open sourcing them.

Without patents, pharmaceutical companies would cease to do research. Its not feasible in some sectors to do research if someone else can copy it with none of the cost

There is no indication that this GE technology is patent protected. With private "trade secrets" which can be kept wrapped indefinitely, the public never gets the benefit of disclosure while incurring the cost of monopoly. There is an argument to be made for non-patent trade secrets being an overall negative.

That's a fair point. I wonder if the US Government would let them patent military trade secrets

as US manufacturing faded away (from a peak of about 20 million jobs in the late 70's to about 12 million jobs today), the economic "good news" story promoted by the thought leaders was the that America's "true" strength was creativity and innovation. and US research universities are the best in the world.

Americans wouldn't need to make their money by building stuff. instead, they'd make their money by inventing and designing stuff and owning the IP. this IP ownership was supposed to guarantee America's prosperity into the future.

so, this silly nationalistic idea was more or less the official economic plan for American prosperity, starting in the late 1980's, i guess.

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