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Comment by thesuperbigfrog | Hacker News Reader

This is the Internet version of the tragedy of the commons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

So many people and groups want to profit with as little effort as possible that the commons (freely available data, open APIs, FLOSS software, etc.) is being overrun with little to no regard for the long term effects.

Data can be copied endlessly, but it has to be generated the first time and updated or else it becomes stale and its usefulness decays. If no one is willing or able to generate or update it, there is nothing good and the signal-to-noise ratio falls off sharply. Everything is noise and it sucks.

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In the history of humanity, intellectual property is a relatively recent phenomenon.

A lot of technology and culture was built without such “protection”.

I sometimes wonder how recent history would have played out without copyrights and patents.

Yes, but in the history of humanity, economic growth of above 0.1% a year is also relatively recent. One of the things that C18 radicals insisted upon was a decent system of IP.

Id argue we're likely relating economic growth (which is measured by contended metrics) to the boom in quality of life we've seen. The problem with this is that the improvements in materials chemistry that have allowed for all these magical things was on the cusp of happening with or without IP. The drive for developing an IP system was more out of necessity in order to capitalize on the coming boom than it was to help that boom occur.

Case in point: look how far LLM's have come since llama hit the public sphere vs. how far organisations like google managed to get, with more time and more resources at their disposal.

Materials chemistry sounds more like the second Industrial Revolution (post 1870) than the first.

C18 radicals?

18th century, I would assume.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_18 is my best guess.

Intellectual and artistic pursuits would be sponsored by rich and powerful people, because it would reflect badly on their honour if they didn't.

Now that we're all equals, the rich and powerful don't have to do any such things anymore.

We're in that part of a MMO where you can't find a quest giver because the spammers and sellers are packed so deeply that it is turning into a blur.

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