One term I thought about including was “Red Queen’s Race”—on a decades-long scale, with the general pace of scientific progress worldwide, societies have to research as hard as they can just to stay in the same place.
Another complication worth considering is that not all data is copyrighted; the problem copyright is claimed to have been initially developed to solve was too many people keeping their information as unpublished trade secrets. When Enigma was cracked, that was kept as an unpublished secret for quite some time; as are a number of present-day secrets, such as nuclear warhead designs. So even if copyright was shrunk to a single year, or less, that doesn’t necessarily imply the immediate spread of next-generation military technology to one’s neighbours.
on a decades-long scale, with the general pace of scientific progress worldwide, societies have to research as hard as they can just to stay in the same place.
Anyone who has played the Civilization series (on any real difficulty level) has no doubt experienced this first hand.
Anyone who has played the Civilization series (on any real difficulty level) has no doubt experienced this first hand.
I learned while playing those games that it is possible to stay ahead in technological advancement without doing any research of my own. Being the middle man is incredibly rewarding.
So even if copyright was shrunk to a single year, or less, that doesn’t necessarily imply the immediate spread of next-generation military technology to one’s neighbours.
I never said it did; I was speaking of material in general, such as civilian information—if it makes the economy grow faster, well, now they have more resources to spend on R&D themselves or to produce more of their existing arsenal or to buy more advanced weaponry from other countries.
If IP abolition did directly convey next-gen military tech to the neighboring country, that would be an even stronger argument against it, of course.
That’s a fair summary of my thought process, yes.
One term I thought about including was “Red Queen’s Race”—on a decades-long scale, with the general pace of scientific progress worldwide, societies have to research as hard as they can just to stay in the same place.
Another complication worth considering is that not all data is copyrighted; the problem copyright is claimed to have been initially developed to solve was too many people keeping their information as unpublished trade secrets. When Enigma was cracked, that was kept as an unpublished secret for quite some time; as are a number of present-day secrets, such as nuclear warhead designs. So even if copyright was shrunk to a single year, or less, that doesn’t necessarily imply the immediate spread of next-generation military technology to one’s neighbours.
Anyone who has played the Civilization series (on any real difficulty level) has no doubt experienced this first hand.
I learned while playing those games that it is possible to stay ahead in technological advancement without doing any research of my own. Being the middle man is incredibly rewarding.
I never said it did; I was speaking of material in general, such as civilian information—if it makes the economy grow faster, well, now they have more resources to spend on R&D themselves or to produce more of their existing arsenal or to buy more advanced weaponry from other countries.
If IP abolition did directly convey next-gen military tech to the neighboring country, that would be an even stronger argument against it, of course.