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Comment by kazinator | Hacker News Reader

New rule: you get to keep your belongings for 20 years and that's it. Then they are taken away. Every dollar you made twenty or more years ago, every asset you acquired, gone.

That oughtta be enough to incentivize people to work and build their wealth.

Anything more than that is unnecessary.

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I think you mean "20 years after you die". That seems like a perfectly rational way to deal with people who want to be buried in their gold and jewels in a pyramid.

OK, so you can have your dad's piano for 20 years after he dies, after that it's public property.

Some people would surprisingly agree with that.

Well, yes; some people would agree with the stronger proposition of you not getting that piano, or not without paying some tax on it.

How on earth do you classify estate taxes as stronger than fixed term ownership?

I don't, but, I mean, when someone comes and takes some of your money, then it means you had a fixed term on owning that amount, which just came to an end.

"Stuff taken away" is "stuff taken away", no matter what angle we take.

Because they didn't have a father?

We should never have accepted the term "intellectual property" at all, if this is the mindset it leads to.

Intellectual property does not belong to you. The entire concept of "owning" intellectual property is a very recent thing.

So how about we go back to how it used to be and just remove this entire concept.

You can own things you can't own an idea.

I disagree that you can own things, but I certainly concede IP as a good starting point.

So you wouldn't mind if I dip my hands into the pockets of the clothing you are wearing and help myself to whatever cash bills I might find?

Also, can you wash this not-my car I'm driving, that happens to be registered in my name?

Let me know if you will be requiring compensation for not-your time and not-your effort.

You will find the needed cleaning materials at the household goods store down the street. Just walk in, grab whatever you need, and walk out.

Your copyrighted work just has to be an original expression, not derived from someone else's work. It doesn't have to contain original ideas.

Patents are for ideas. Patents do in fact expire far faster than copyrights in the USA. The main problem with patents is patent trolling in the area of software patents.

It would be a lot easier to defend copyright if it expired quicker.

I used to be against copyright, but with the rise of scum like Altman, I'm going all in. Copyright should last forever, as long as the ownership is handed down through inheritance or other transactions and not assigned to the public domain.

Why should someone be able to charge multiple times for the same thing?

That entire concept is a legal fiction, and the compromise was to make it last only a limited time.

Because then the creative individual, in order to sustain themselves, will basically need an ultra rich patron who pays a lot of money for just the one copy or one performance. You know, basically how things worked before printing presses and recorded music.

Most copyrighted works don't make any money. Those that do go through a period where they sell a bunch of copies and after that it's just a trickle, if anything.

Why should you be able to charge every separate individual who comes to your concert? Same per seat price whether the place is filled to the back row or to the second row!

If you rent something, you're getting charged multiple times for exactly the same thing. You just paid for one month of staying in an apartment, now they want you to pay for a month again! The mere passage of time is churning out month after month. They are all the same, but you get charged! Same with power tools, cars and everything else rentable. Fifty people before you rented this hammer drill from Home Depot, but you still have to pay the same as they did.

Anyway, suppose that one should not be able to charge multiple times for the same thing. Then, fine, let the purveyor of an AI service also not be allowed to charge for their algorithmic rehashing of someone else's works.

I'm for getting rid of all forms of rent. But it has to be all: no cherry picking. Don't take away renting from one, while allowing another one to sell unlimited copies of a work. Or vice versa.

Why should heirs receive copyright? They did nothing to create it. Worthless parasites, as the heirs of Marvin Gaye demonstrate with their stylistic similarity lawsuits.

So every year I go to a swap meet and try to exchange my “expiring” belongings for something similar to reset the clock? Or, they get taken away by force? By someone who has meticulous records of all my stuff?

What problem are you trying to solve?

Ideas are free to replicate. Nothing is taken.

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