[MURG] Uploading IP (intellectual property)

[Joseph J. Strout]

At 1:35 PM -0500 2/27/04, Yan King Yin wrote:

>  >It certainly won't be more chaotic; quite the contrary, the more the
>>relevant research is in the public domain, the smoother and more
>>certain it will be for everybody. 
>
>Your point is patently not true, if you keep in mind
>that uploading eventually will NOT be a free thing.

Yes, it still is true.  If the techniques are public domain then 
there will be many companies offering them.  It will still be an 
expensive, complex process (at first) and "many" here is likely to 
mean four or five.  But that is far, far better than having one 
company that can legally prevent others from participating, and 
therefore has a monopoly.

Of course all this assumes that it's run as a business, which strikes 
me as rather unlikely anyway.  The government of most countries is 
likely to provide the service as part of their national health care 
systems, or so I would hope.

>The computer itself at least costs money.  The software
>will also likely be commercial. I can imagine that some
>software can be developed for free, but why would that
>be a better outcome if the programmers don't get paid
>for what they do?

Programmers do get paid for what they do even when no patents are 
involved.  (That is in fact how I make my living.)

>  Your idea of "smooth" is not the same as mine or someone else's.

My idea is: the process is available as widely and cheaply as 
possible, with high quality too.  That is best fostered by the core 
technologies being public domain, so that there can be competition.

>  It boils down to who grabs how big a slice.

No.  Your analogy assumes a zero-sum game, which does not apply to 
macroeconomics in general, and especially to mind uploading, which is 
a medical procedure.

>  >And as for rewarding the original contributors: who cares?
>>Isn't immortality reward enough?
>
>There's more to it than rewarding contributors. It
>also means extra funding for research *now* and thus
>accelerating progress.

No, it doesn't.  Perhaps I'm assuming too much and we're thinking of 
different countries.  In the united states, medical research is 
funded mostly by the government (NIH) and by non-profit organizations 
(e.g. HHMI).  Pure research proceeds through publication; IP stifles 
publication and stifles progress, so labs don't make use of it. 
Recognition -- and additional funding -- come from making important 
discoverings and publishing them, not from trying to greedily hoard 
your findings and make a buck.

Perhaps you should talk to some people who are actually engaged in 
pure research (e.g. in neuroscience, which is the field most directly 
related to mind uploading) and ask them where their funding comes 
from.  (Randal?)


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