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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Here is an absolutely excellent cross section of the startup world, consisting primarily of early-stage companies, a subset of a larger population of companies that vied against each other to gain a position on the list:

http://yclist.com/

Of the companies on this list, make an argument as to the percentage of them that would be viable in a world where copyright on source code wasn't enforceable, where there was no trade secret law and publication of company secrets was thus protected under the First Amendment, and where any element of content on any web page reachable on the Internet could be freely lifted and used by any other company.

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    Here is an absolutely excellent cross section of the
    startup world

It's irrelevant. In an absence of IP, the playing field would be totally different, and hence there would be other strategies and other startups.

That's why I brought up opportunity cost in my parent post.

The playing field would be completely different, but not necessarily inferior.

Both you and the original poster are trying to make a defence of IP based on circular logic that avoids considering opportunity cost. That's invalid.

So is your answer, "none of them"?

His answer is:

'If the system changes, then it produces a different set of results'

I could use my godlike powers to create a true democracy, a dictatorship or a theocracy. Different people would raise to the top in each case.

Pointing to the people who have risen to the top for any one of those and saying 'if you changed the system, none of those people would be there' is simply a trivial truism, it is not an argument for not changing the system.

I already understood that he wanted to change the question so that he could answer it more easily. But I asked a pretty specific question, and I'm curious about the answer. There's a lot of companies on this list. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if most of them didn't rely on IP protections, someone would have called me out on it already.

Conclusion: most YC companies are significantly dependent on IP laws to operate.

You may come to that conclusion if you choose.

Its widely accepted that where an absence of evidence exists, it is logically and scientifically reasonable to come to a conclusion based on an individual's personal bias.

There is a set of things A that can be done under the current system. There is a different set of things B that could be done without any IP laws. Asking how many items in A are also in B is not a valid way to determine whether A or B is larger.

That said, I haven't heard of most of the companies on that list. The ones I have heard of, would all probably do fine (or, as well as under the current system).

where there was no trade secret law and publication of company secrets was thus protected under the First Amendment

The first amendment just means the government can't censor you.

If your implications are correct and your argument sound, then you're saying that tech startups are in a market that only has value due to legislation. Without that legislation, you're saying the tech startup world would have no value and wouldn't thrive or even exist.

I disagree with your claim, but even if it were true, isn't that tantamount to, say, legislation making the sale of automobiles illegal in order to preserve the viability of the horse-drawn wagon market?

Respectfully --- I don't even know who you are, so I can't actually harbor ill will towards you --- but this is batshit. IP law isn't special-purpose legislation. It's among the 17-or-so powers specifically delegated to Congress by Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution, along with things like "maintaining a navy" and "coining money".

I don't understand what part of my argument you're disputing. I never said that the federal government doesn't have the constitutional authority to legislate intellectual property protection. I also never said or hinted that IP law is "special-purpose legislation."

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