I am coming to the same conclusion. Why do ideas need to b…

Asking the state to protect them is analogous to soliciting for subsidies.

the right to own property is the most fundamental thing for capitalism to work.

I can tell you my business was copied by others and I hate it. It was all MY idea and hard work to make it. This is the first mover advantage working against you.

I have actually moved the other direction. Bitcoin is intellectual property, and unless the entire world moves away from IP law, only a fool would invent unique technology without a way to monetize it. Hopefully, bitcoin innovates us to a better system.

But I'm fairly certain it will not if all of the patents are held by Mastercard and Alibaba.

I would say that it depends. If you have a truly novel idea or innovation, a patent would help prevent others from taking it and claiming it as their own.

But the opposite could (and has) also be done depending on who patented first.

Copying is not Theft. https://youtu.be/IeTybKL1pM4

Pretty much every tech ever invented has been so without patents.

Monetization strategy is different from patent.

If your monetization strategy is "patents" you are likely to lose in the market, as well has harm it overall.

My hope is that all these patents by all parties are either non enforceable, or won't be enforced bc are being made purely as defensive acts to prevent anyone from patenting and enforcing.

But I don't like needing to trust govt lawyers or good intentions

The best time to understand why it is in the communities interest to protect useful ideas is right after you have one.
Second best time is when you can imagine having one...

I don’t think that’s true. Certainly not in the Information Age. Even PGP and RSA corporations had patents. They were run by *the* cypherpunks. Hal Finney holds patents. Erik Voorhees and all the small blocker companies (Blockstream etc...) do too.

Even Red Hat - famed for being the main, patent-free Linux services company actually holds many patents. People misread their ethos and assumed they were anti-IP, but they aren’t.

Check out Against Intellectual Monopoly by Boldrin and Levine. Great book worth reading.

I’ll check it out. I was a longtime follower of Stephan Kinsella, who helped shape my longtime thoughts on the topic. The thing that really changed my mind is the non-physical, intellectual creation (PoW) and ownership of individual bitcoins.

Two separate Qs here:
1. Is a world without patents possible and preferable? (IMO unequivocally yes, and theory and history make this very plain to me)

2. In a world with patents (as we have) are they a good idea? (It depends...cont. below)

Under current regime, patents are probably necessary to do biz in some instances. Defensive, VC access, etc.

But patents as a defense of tech you're actively using in your biz model is not the same as pre-emptive patents AS A business model.

The latter can work, and many firms make part or all their biz model based on this. Called patent trolling. It can make money, but:
a) far less than highly innovative co's with other monetization
b) not the co's who lead rapid advance into an industry

To extent nChain filing core patents as defense of some other biz model, ok.

To extent filing 100s preemptive patents AS A biz model, incl. on stuff they're not developing, not bullish signal if they are leading company in BSV.

nChain is a company of 50-100 employees trying to build a world where all property is fixed to the BSV blockchain where it is ledgered and enforced. I see no indication that any patents are filed frivolously, but they are to protect the budding blockchain

...which, if you want a world without state enforcement of property (intellectual or otherwise), needs to be protected long enough to infect the major systems of state until they are obsolete. The state needs to be innovated out of corrupt power.

They created power by slowly taking it while convincing people that they were still free. The path to increased freedom will occur while convincing the state they still have power. I wrote this on the topic: https://coingeek.com/the-reformation-of-bitcoin/

I'm with you broadly on theory of social change (make state irrelevant by building alts around it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK2DBsud3mo)

Strategically, work w gov approach I'm not sure on.

Restrict Fed, but increase tx controls?

Bitcoin outpace stale corrupt state regs, or bitcoin try to be a tool to make enforcing state regs easier: which more likely to create > long term freedom?

Not clear that legal compliance increases odds of getting Fed out of money or loss of other freedom

PS - the reformation didn't spread like wildfire too fast for catholic state/church to stop because Luther got a patent on German Bible. That would've slowed it, not helped.

The problem is that there is no way to develop or propagate bitcoin without state meddling. Either overt or covert, the state and the law will have an influence, so the winning strategy is that which navigates it the most effectively.

So does it not then follow that the optimal way to navigate state and law meddling is to provide the backbone infrastructure of apps and services to the lowest levels of local organizations? Loss of control seems ike the main issue

Uber and Lyft famously ignored state law and grew fast enough for states to not want to be the bad guy by shutting them down. Imagine if they lobbied instead of served customers illegally?

Indeed. Imagine asking permission to build apps on BSV for essential tools for small, local municipalities instead of just doing it and letting the cards falls as they may via market demand? Voting, budget & accounting, registrars, licensing...

Sometimes you have to take the chance and be willing to accept the consequences if you fail.