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Comment by hxa7241 | Hacker News Reader

Marvelous? It is an interesting idea, yes, but if even Landes & Posner express clear doubt over whether it does any good overall, one ought not overdo it.

> It has allowed value to accrue to things that were actually valuable while also being intangible.

It allowed price to be given to them, but since that detracts from the value we can immediately see it is not such a clearly good proposition -- it is very questionable.

Copyright gets by to a large degree on a conservative mind-set. It is almost impossible to see alternative ideas, but very easy to appreciate what actually exists. Caution is not all wrong, but when the greatest information tech in history has recently been invented, one would think the situation is more about turning the clock forward not back.

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"It allowed price to be given to them, but since that detracts from the value we can immediately see it is not such a clearly good proposition -- it is very questionable."

Something can only be priced because it has value already.

As for seeing alternative ideas: while hardly a conservative - I think it's a great development to allow ideas to be monetized. If someone has an alternative system to copyright that can do that I am truly all-ears . . .

What I find illogical is this idea that we should move forward to a world where we run a knowledge-based economy but that that knowledge shouldn't have any monetary value. Are we going to barter ideas between one another to make ends meet? I'd love to hear how . . .

> Something can only be priced because it has value already.

You're missing the point. Ideas are invaluable. Assigning them a price detracts that value.

> I think it's a great development to allow ideas to be monetized.

The idea that everything needs to be monetize-able to be worth investing in/spending time on is, for lack of better words, a disease.

> What I find illogical is this idea that we should move forward to a world where we run a knowledge-based economy but that that knowledge shouldn't have any monetary value.

How is this illogical? Knowledge had no monetary value to being with, because it's worth more than any amount of money.

Also, we're not going to run a "knowledge-based economy". We're going to move to a knowledge-based society that most likely will depend on a service-based economy in which everyone can profit off each other's innovations, allowing for incremental development that will speed up progress by magnitudes.

> Are we going to barter ideas between one another to make ends meet? I'd love to hear how . . .

But that's exactly what we're doing right now (licensing etc), and which you rightly point out is illogical to the point of utter absurdness.

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