The emergent property market

Jonathan Crowcroft

Internet Policy Review: Journal on Internet Regulation, 2020, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: The title of this piece is a somewhat heavy-handed word play. The property market I'mwriting about is the market in intellectual property, which is broken in so many ways, evidencedby the existence of patent mountains and patent trolls, fighting over how many angles they canfit in the 360 degrees around the head of a pin, rather than actually innovating. (It is well knownin creative tech circles that pausing to talk to the IP lawyers would never have led to thediscovery of the internet protocol). The emergent property I'm referring to is the possibility thatsuch a complex system could fairly suddenly exhibit some new behaviour. In this article, Ispeculate that this new behaviour could just be that the idea of property ceases to exist. Thearticle is written somewhat derivatively after the 1960s science fiction style of writers such asCyril Kornbluth, JG Ballard, and John Brunner. Any resemblance to their very creative output isentirely good luck rather than actual skill.

Keywords: Sci-fi; Liquified law; Robot law; Artificial intelligence; Intellectual property (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:iprjir:216219

DOI: 10.14763/2020.1.1453

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