"The current era of intellectual property is waning. It has been based on two faulty assumptions made nearly three decades ago: that since some intellectual property (IP) is good, more must be better; and that IP is about controlling knowledge rather than sharing it. These assumptions are as inaccurate in biotechnology (the field of science covered by this report) as they are in other fields from music to software."
The study and article caused a great deal of discussion in the online community. What's clear from the ensuing discussion is that many people are confusing things.
The "death" of the existing system of intellectual property rights doesn't mean a lawless, anarchistic land where anyone can steal from anyone, or even a landscape where everything belongs to the state.
The problem with the idea of intellectual property is that it's not property at all, yet it is being treated as property. Say you have a brilliant idea. Does that mean I'm not allowed to think or act on that idea because it is "yours"? Thoughts don't belong to people. They are not property. It's something we do as human beings.
People often give misleading examples of why intellectual property rights are good. Take a software company that spends thousands of man hours creating their software. Isn't it right that all their efforts should be protected from theft? Sure. It would be theft to take the software products, mass copy them, and sell them or pass them off as my own. I have not created anything here. I have only stolen. But if you are a clever software programmer and have the ability to re-create similar software by the fruits of your own mental and physical labour, why should you be prevented from doing so? It is your right to create and produce. Just because someone else has done something before, doesn't mean you should never be able to do something similar. Your approach may be very different, and then again, it may not. But if it is your creation, you must be free to do it; and you also must be free to do what you want with it.
Ideas and thoughts must never be constrained by the abstractions of intellectual property rights. And individuals must be free to re-create an existing technology, medicine, or work of art, for example, based on those original thoughts. It's the specific material product of those thoughts in the creation of something of value that must be protected from theft.
The present system attacks anybody that attempts to re-create anything which already exists, even though such a process of re-creation requires enormous resources of creativity and self-expression of the individual.
"Intellectual Property" rights should disappear and be replaced with "Specific Material Products of the Intellect" rights. And what about the artist who produces a great piece of music? Or the author who produces a great book? These are not "intellectual property." These are specific material products of the intellect, and ought to be protected from wholesale theft or uncreative reproduction and distribution—if that's what the creator wishes.
To be clear, this doesn't imply that you shouldn't be allowed to re-create versions or adaptations of any of these works using your own creative processes. And that's what the present intellectual property system prevents us from doing. It prevents us from taking something, changing it, building upon it, and arriving at something new and beneficial for society.
Indeed, the system as it stands does need to die.
