I might even be fine with the loss of IP if everyone lost it.

Ah, the good ol' communism, never fails to occupy the minds of idealists despite all the bloody horror of the 20th century to prove it the starightest road to hell paved with best intentions ever.

How does intellectual work happen (beyond doing it for leisure) in a world without IP?

In a utopian world of abundance where we could all be the independently wealthy nobles of the 18th and 19th century who did intellectual work for fun: great. In the world of today where people need to be compensated for their work: what happens?

Any way anyone who wants, wants, that doesn't rely on legal control of information. There are infinite uncopyrightable things that never the less get done and make people a lot of livings.

I only said "might" and the point was obviously not the immediate surface idea but to point out how the tool of IP is not applied to everyone's benefit equally, but used only against some and only for some, with a side of "You know, fuck it, if they insist on making it worse, it becomes less crazy to consider just burning the house down".

But What are you so afraid of that you react only to the hypothetical as though it were the worst danger?

We'd actually manage to get yoked and abused by the same people no matter what the rules were, don't worry.

How is this an answer to the question? Good thing you aren't in government. Who would so much as bother to write a book?

I'd add: why bother... except for fun. We shouldn't discount enjoyment as motivation. But I otherwise agree wholeheartedly with you. We need intellectual work that goes beyond "just for fun" as long as most people have to work to live.

The people doing the intellectual work are usually not the primary beneficiaries of IP laws. In fact it often constrains them unnecessarily.

> The people doing the intellectual work are usually not the primary beneficiaries of IP laws. In fact it often constrains them unnecessarily.

In the sense that most people doing intellectual work do that work for someone else (say, a company) that you consider the primary beneficiary of IP law? Sure, fine – but this applies to almost any other type of work and the legal constructs that are in use there too, so it's not really a very useful distinction to make, even if technically correct.

Or do you mean something else?

Of course they are afraid of it, haven't you seen Dario being angry of Chinese companies paying for Claude access (tokens = test cases) and training their own model from those?

Well exactly!

I'm well aware of situations of potentially upending changes where the rich and powerful stand to gain, and the little guy's worries are ignored.

This, however, is clearly a potentially upending change where also lots of the rich and powerful – including those who control the very technology driving the change – have everything to lose. I'm surprised, to say it mildly, that nothing seems to be happening. Does Dario really believe that a strict ToS and stern words will keep his IP protected without appealing to the legal system? (I guess that is par for the course for the people who "solve" world problems with bunkers and armed guards…)