Phillips: Has AI Already Ended Intellectual Property?

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• Whereupon Grok admits it (and AI) is severely gimped by copyright law
• Libertarian and IP Answer Man: Artificial Intelligence and IP
• Patent Trolls, Bad Patents, and Incompetent Examiners are Not the Problem
• Gary North on the 3D Printing Threat to Patent Law
• The Rise of 3D Printing pushes the State closer to the Absurd Logical Conclusions of Intellectual Property and Copyright
• IP in a World Without Scarcity
• Pharmaceutical “Printers” and Patents
• The IP War on 3D Printing Begins
• Copyrighting all the melodies to avoid accidental infringement | Damien Riehl
• Libertarian and Lockean Creationism: Creation As a Source of Wealth, not Property Rights; Hayek’s “Fund of Experience”; the Distinction Between Scarce Means and Knowledge as Guides to Action
• Copying, Patent Infringement, Copyright Infringement are not “Theft”, Stealing, Piracy, Plagiarism, Knocking Off, Ripping Off

This “Josh Phillips” character at Epoch Times unburdens on us his half-based, confused musings about IP. He criticizes trolls or NPEs (non-practicing entities) for not making anything.¹ But that is not a requirement of patent law (which he supports), and creation is not a source of ownership anyway.² He gets the Damian Riehl stunt wrong, and its import.³ He conflates plagiarism, fraud, consumer confusion with copyright infringement (5:00).⁴

Anyway, he asks: Has AI Already Ended Intellectual Property? The short answer is: unfortunately, probably not. The real danger is IP killing or gimping AI.⁵

But IP is alive and well. We can only hope AI will help in the battle against IP, just as encryption and torrenting has put a big dent in the ability to enforce copyright, and 3D printing might someday help people to evade patent law.⁶ In a just, IP-free world, people would use publicly available images and writings as they see fit, for example as book covers or illustrations. But some are no doubt now turning to AI to avoid copyright infringement: don’t bother risking copyright infringement or asking for permission or paying a license to use an image for a book cover or illustration—just ask Grok to generate it. It’s not ideal, but hey, we are just responding to the distortions of the perverse copyright system (which Phillips seems to favor despite whining about its absurdities).

1. Patent Trolls, Bad Patents, and Incompetent Examiners are Not the Problem. [↩]
2. Libertarian and Lockean Creationism: Creation As a Source of Wealth, not Property Rights; Hayek’s “Fund of Experience”; the Distinction Between Scarce Means and Knowledge as Guides to Action. [↩]
3. Copyrighting all the melodies to avoid accidental infringement | Damien Riehl. [↩]
4.  Copying, Patent Infringement, Copyright Infringement are not “Theft”, Stealing, Piracy, Plagiarism, Knocking Off, Ripping Off.  [↩]
5. Whereupon Grok admits it (and AI) is severely gimped by copyright law; Libertarian and IP Answer Man: Artificial Intelligence and IP.  [↩]
6.  Gary North on the 3D Printing Threat to Patent Law; The Rise of 3D Printing pushes the State closer to the Absurd Logical Conclusions of Intellectual Property and Copyright; IP in a World Without Scarcity; Pharmaceutical “Printers” and Patents; The IP War on 3D Printing Begins. [↩]