[MURG] Uploading IP (intellectual property)

[cat13 at illrepute.org]

"Yan King Yin" <y.k.y at lycos.com> writes:

> From: cat13 at illrepute.org
> 
> >> A reward system generally assigns credits to people who
> >> have made efforts to *create* a certain product. Any
> >> corporate management deals with this issue, although some
> >> would say it's not all-important.
> >
> >I'm familiar with the purpose of reward systems in general.  I was asking
> >why you wanted one.
> 
> Why do you question such a common motive? Are you questioning
> why software companies want to make money and not give out
> software for free?

I'm trying to ask "what would you use money for?"
You're answering "I like money, don't you?"

Sure, being rewarded financially is nice.  I'm not yet convinced it's the best
expenditure of our efforts at this point.  You're talking about financial rewards
being used to pay for specific stuff.  I'm asking, what specific stuff?

> >> The open source movement generally overlooks the reward
> >> issue and therefore has a serious problem.
> >
> >I could say "it's worked pretty well for a pretty long time," and be right,
> >but it might be more useful if I pointed out that the goals of the open
> >source movement are different from yours; the open source movement would
> >have serious problems were it invented to make money for YKY, but since it
> >has other ends, I dispute your claim.
> 
> It worked in a historical context, when software is also
> being commercialized at the same time. If you take
> competition into consideration, you have to admit that
> both commericial and open-source paradigms will co-exist.
> for quite some time. To claim that open-source is superior
> and therefore everyone should do that is not looking at
> the facts.

You've changed here from arguing that open source is misguided to arguing that it
is not yet ready to replace closed source.  We're also getting off-topic.

> >Let's not follow the open-source model.
> >Instead, why don't we follow the model under which science has progressed to
> >date?  Why don't we follow the peer-review model?  Why don't we follow the
> >shoulders-of-giants model?
> 
> Science and technology have always been commercialized.
> Think about electricity, drugs, not to mention the genome
> project.

Commercial is not the same as proprietary.  Also, proprietary in your examples
has led to monopolization and stagnation.

> >How will the consortium fund the entire project?  I understand that it will
> >repay contributors after this many-decades-or-centuries-long project is over,
> >but how will it find enough contributors willing to put in enough resources?
> 
> If we don't complete the loop of contribution-reward,
> then progress would likely be even slower. 

Only if information discovered is not published.

> The reward
> system is what motivates people to work towards a goal.

Prove it.  Cite.
Specifically, please prove that it is normal human behavior to contribute to
projects whose end they don't expect to see in return for tokens with no
backing.

> In reality it is the difference between being able to
> make a living doing MU research versus doing research
> that is only indirectly related to MU.

See previous statement.

> >I'm not sure enough wealth currently exists to borrow.  Even if it did, why
> >would J. Random Investor lend when no return is expected within his lifetime?
> 
> The tokens can be traded publicly and therefore it
> can be passed from hand to hand, just like stocks.
> To be more exact it's like a long-maturity bond, with
> its particular level of risks attached. This is no
> different than other bonds being traded on the stock
> market.

Perhaps you should look further into why people give up good money in exchange
for bonds.
No less cryptically: "bonds" are a type of "security".  What is secure about
some crackpot scheme?  Replace "uploading" with "the ascension"; why aren't
tokens funding the immanentization of the ascention bought and sold?