Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter (now X) and Square (now Block), sparked a weekend’s worth of debate around intellectual property, patents, and copyright, with a characteristically terse post declaring, “delete all IP law.”
X’s current owner Elon Musk quickly replied, “I agree.”
Scratch beneath the surface and you’ll find unscrupulous greed here as well.
The reason Musk wants this might be greed, but it’s very stupid if that’s his reason. A huge amount of the US’s global economic power comes from strong-arming the rest of the world to enforce US patents and copyright, thus funneling trillions of dollars from the rest of the world to the US. Without any patents or copyright there would be improved Chinese Tesla copies on the market within a year.
The Chinese market already has better EVs than Tesla for cheaper afaik. Teslas don’t sell well there anymore.
Yeah, you’re right, but wielding this power effectively requires thinking beyond the current fiscal quarter.
Also, small nit (because the essence of what you’re saying is absolutely correct), but…ain’t nobody trying to rip off Teslas. They’re absolute garbage, literal dumpster in the case of the cybertruck. Chinese EVs on the market today are already cheaper and better.
That said, from Elon’s perspective I’m pretty sure this is more about training LLMs on presently copy-written material, unhindered by IP protections.