... And why the problem will get worse as technological development accelerates

Originally posted as a response to a question in the singularity_now community on Livejournal It serves as a good summary of what I think about IP, so I'm posting it here.

Update: It occurs to me, after some examination and discussion with a friend, that this particular case applies more to patents, a particular subset of intellectual property, rather than broadly to other subsets like copyright (although that has its own problems).

Update: This book provides a huge case against IP. In the article. I left in a nod to the idea that, where innovation is not cheap, it's possible for patents to aid it. This report demolishes it stem to stern. The book even takes on the evil of drug patents, despite the fact that pharmaceutical R&D is expensive. A good read.

Big Pharma says patents are necessary because drug R&D is expensive. Guess why it's so expensive? patent license fees!

So patents do work. They spur a mad rush of innovation, with companies locking up all the new things that the industry can grasp in the next few years, until the innovation space stagnates and is locked up because no one has access to anyone else's patents.

Patents start as a drag race, but end in gridlock. Racing to the red light.

Back when the US Constitution was ratified, the goals for IP were made pretty clear:

"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"

"The useful arts", in my estimation, is pretty damn synonymous with technology. Thus, I don't think it's too far off the mark to say that this clause of the Constitution is aimed at directly bringing about the singularity, centuries before the word was even used in that context (or perhaps, in any context!).

Here we are, over 200 years later, and it's becoming apparent that these same laws ("securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right..") are now retarding innovation, rather than promoting it.

Part of the problem is the intersection of of accelerating progress with the static, and, in the case of copyright, the lengthening of the terms of IP rights. If developmental progress accelerates, then these terms should be being shortened, not lengthened. Otherwise, by the time we get to the singularity, a place where progress looks infinite to natural human eyes, copyright and patent rights might as well be permanent.

It's easy to go overboard with this and say that all IP policy is bad, but the fact is that, in it's time, granting such monopolies DID spur more innovation than would have occurred otherwise.

So what's the difference between then and now?

Continued...

I think it boils down to the accessibility of innovation, and the main factor in that equation is cost. If, as in the case of software, anyone with a $300 PC can innovate software applications, then granting monopolies to single parties just stymies the VAST number of potential innovators.

On the other hand, we have things like pharmaceuticals. While it's certainly deplorable that drug companies demand prices for their products that poor nations can't afford to save lives, the fact is that if they had no patent rights, no one would be able to afford the quite expensive process of research and development to produce those drugs in the first place.

The difference lies in the costs to becoming an innovator. Where the barrier to entry is high in terms of capital, innovation is scarce and benefits from IP monopoly grants. Where the costs is trivial, innovators glut the market, so to speak, and monopoly IP grants then retard innovation.

Interestingly, computing technology will have direct effects upon patentable fields like pharmaceuticals and even consumer products.

Proteome sequencing benefits directly from Moore's law, and can reduce the costs of drug development, allowing less-well-capitalized players into the pharmaceuticals market. Biosimulations would allow for increasingly accurate clinical trials for drugs without such stringent safety rules, since they'd be testing them on simulations of people rather than real ones.

Where consumer products are concerned, recursive fabricators and, eventually, programmable nanofactories will be so cheap that anyone with a garage will be able to design plastics, electronics, clothing, furniture, and so on, increasing with sophistication as time goes on.

At present, patent rights are retarding innovation in software, but not so much in other patentable fields. As the singularity approaches, however, all these other fields will essentially become, or at least, strongly resemble, software. Once that happens, each field will be retarded by current patent policy in the same way.

Technological development always compresses the costs of innovation in every field. That being the case, IP rights, as they are currently implemented, become increasingly onerous not just to individual innovators, but to the very "progress of science and the useful arts" these policies are intended to encourage.

Something has to give.

Comments — Nato Welch 2006/02/17 21:48