So I just read Bill Gates' 1976 Open Letter To Hobbyists, in which he whines about not making more money from his software. You know, instead of being proud of making software that people wanted to use. And then the bastard went on and made proprietary licences for software the industry standard, holding back innovation and freedom for decades. What a douche canoe.

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[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

the caveats that commercializing someone else’s work or taking credit for someone else’s work should be illegal.

So, not actually abolishing IP, then.

[–] Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Commercializing means sell for profit. If a non-profit were to create a cracked version of Windows 7 with security updates and sell that for $200 an install that'd not count as commercialization. The idea here is that if Netflix took someone else's work and made a bajillion dollars off it they'd need to ask for permission and credit the original author.

I don't know if something still counts as intellectual property if it can be infringed upon except by for-profit entities.

[–] General_Effort@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

In the US, copyright is limited by Fair Use. It is still IP. Eventually, you'd just be changing how Fair Use works. Not all for the better, I think.

Maybe one could compare it to a right of way over someone's physical property. The public may use it for a certain purpose, in a limited way, which lowers its value. But what value it has, belongs to the owner.