Saw another article today about quote "How Intellectual property could be Transferred through the Blockchain Ecosystem". Once again, people just don't get it. They do not see where this is going. They keep asking what crypto can do for the legacy economy when they should be wondering what the world will even look like without it.
There is no such thing as IP.
Intellectual property is enforced by the centralized system we live in today. It can not be enforced in a borderless permissionless world. Just look at China. They unapologetically stole every piece of tech they could get their hands on and no one could stop them.
And they exist within the confines of a single border. What happens when the entity 'stealing' the tech for themselves exists across every country operating from within the digital metaverse? It's going to be mindblowing I can barely even imagine it. I'm am only just scratching the surface in this post. Not even the tip of the iceberg.
Think about Torrents and pirating. We couldn't stop people from "stealing" music and video; why would it be any different with money ownership or branding? In fact, it will be different, but in the opposite direction. Stopping DAOs from "stealing" these things will be a thousand times harder when these networks are enforced across thousands of nodes and dozens of countries. Impossible even. Still, I expect quite the war to happen regardless of the futility of it.
Attack on free speech.
In the end this is inevitable. Programmers are protected by freedom of speech. Writing code is never illegal (only running code is certain ways happens to be). However, when devs come for everything the legacy economy has and eats the lunch of every billionaire on the planet, what other choice are they going to have? They will have to make this type of expression illegal (or at least try to). Like I said, it's a war they are guaranteed to lose. But I'm sure it will be quite ugly during the thick of it.
At the end of the day I get mad because the vast majority of people do not see what I can tell is painfully obvious. However, this is a "show not tell" situation. We must show the world in definite terms that this is going to happen and there isn't a damn thing they can do to stop it. We must prove it to them, because they are in absolute disbelief that the world could change so vastly in such a short period of time.
Imagine if I create a clone of Cards in Humanity. I have plans to do just that. What's actually stopping me from calling it Card's Against Humanity? A cease and desist order? That's laughable.
My substitute name for this clone will be Magic Words. This is the branding I will use by default. However, what happens if I make a skin for this open source game that changes all the branding back to Card's Against Humanity? What if this skin gets seeded by a torrent on a blockchain and users who seed that torrent get paid in crypto to distribute it to the world?
Who is the legal system going to target in this situation? They can't sue me. I may of created these things but as soon as they were projected into the world I lost total control of them. I am not running a server that calls it Card's Against Humanity. Those versions are running locally on the gamer's computer. I have nothing to do with it.
Normally in this situation I would be running a server or selling a product in a centralized manner that could be targeted. In an open-source WEB3 atmosphere, the entire game gets changed. Again I say, there is no IP law that can be enforced once crypto goes mainstream.
Think about all the popular brands and franchises.
- Star Wars
- Disney
- Starbucks
- Super Mario
- Star Trek
- Every patent
- Every drug
- Every brand
None of them are safe.
All of them will be 'stolen' by the communities that love them. They belong to the people now. Everything will be hashed and rehashed and there isn't a damn thing the original "owners" can do about it except allow it to happen and help with the development so they don't get left behind.
And that's the funny thing...
We'll all know something is fully decentralized and unassailable if they simply pirate another brand/franchise that everyone already knows/loves. Should we see a blockchain Mandalorian game that has nothing to do with Disney, we'll automatically know it's legit because Disney can't shut it down even though they absolutely would in every other circumstance possible. Something tells me a lot of lawyers are about to become fully obsolete.
So you've made a collectible breeding monsters game. Gotta collect them all! Do you call it Axie Infinity or Pokemon? Oops, can't call it Pokemon because you have a centralized dev team and a centralized everything else that can get shut down immediately.
None of the projects out there today are doing it right. Not is single one. The infrastructure simply doesn't exist yet and the vision is severely lacking.
Imagine the infrastructure it would take to dethrone Big Tech.
Imagine the infrastructure it would take to dethrone Big Pharma.
Imagine the infrastructure it would take to dethrone Big Oil.
What about the military industrial complex?
What about Hollywood?
What about central banks?
What about government?
They will all be destroyed and reborn as DAOs
Every single one. And it's really impossible to know how that's even going to go down, because it's going to be batshit insane I assure you all. But it will happen, and it will be a thing of legend. We live in the most important transitionary phase in human history. This is why I scoff at all the greed-monsters who are still focused on the money. I'm more interested in saving the Earth from complete obliteration. The cancer of greed has spread itself deep, and if you can't see Armageddon on the horizon then I don't know what to tell you. These are 'evolve or die' chronicles, and we are living them in the present tense.
Conclusion
Imagine writing a post about how an open source tech is going to protect and secure closed source tech. That's what keeps happening over and over again with crypto, because no one seems to get it. No one sees what's happening here. It's all about how we are going to manipulate crypto to suit our needs, and no one seems to realize how crypto is going to shatter and destroy just about everything we know, and it will be a good thing.
"You will own nothing, and you will be happy."
No matter how many times they try to create "enterprise blockchain" or stable coins or CBDC or other "blockchain not Bitcoin" solutions, all they do is showcase their ignorance. The Dinosaurs are just that: on the brink of extinction. Don't let them pull you into the tar pit with them.
There is no such thing as intellectual property in the future. Ideas no longer get to be owned, and that's fine. There will be plenty of other ways to generate value and accumulate wealth without these ridiculous patents who's only authority are men with guns. The future of enforcement is digital, and we are making the shift from negative reinforcement and prison to positive reinforcement and community. It's the ultimate upgrade for society as a whole.