In a way, we already have intellectual property laws today in the form of copyright and patent laws. Thus, intellectual property is not really a new idea. I agree that nanotechnology will dramatically devalue material goods until they can be made and purchased at negligible cost. However, this will not reduce the value of human services and intellectual creations, so people will still be able to earn a living from thinking jobs. I also envision a system in which people create designs for objects that can be manufactured via nanotech. A person can download these and make as many of such an object as they want, provided they have a home nanofabricator (more on that later). The designers may find it lucrative to attach a price to their designs so they can make extra money. Therefore, it is no longer the object that is valuable, but the design itself. There's much more to this, but I'll stop here so other people can post their thoughts about this.

The link leads a summary, which I read, and which was the substance of Richard Terra's post. No I didn't listen to the whole audio file. I had earlier read Darrell Johnson's interesting essay on Mass Market Busking – The Inevitable Economics of Software which goes into some depth on the idea. I'm not sure how well the busking model will work, but it seems worth trying.

My point, beyond the simple coincidence of a news article which had busking in the subtitle, is that some of these discussions about "rewarding artists" (and other thinkers) sometimes seem to assume that without intellectual property rights there would be no art. That is simply not the case. Plenty of music, poetry, drama and academic scholarship already is produced for very different reasons, and would continue even if copyright disappeared tomorrow.

It's a truism that few famous artists grew rich from their art. Poetry is only one of many fields where we have flourishing art which is not driven by earnings from selling intellectual property, or even any direct payment for performing.

I don't object to the principle of intellectual property rights, despite the flaws and growing pains that exist at present. And if IP encourages people like Jewel, J.K. Rowling and many others to continue producing more art, despite getting started for different reasons (which may still be their main motivation), that's fine by me. But there are also plenty of other ways in which artists, programmers (and programming artists) and other producers of intellectual property can be rewarded, and IMHO I think it's worth keeping those in mind too when we discuss reforming intellectual property.

This is just basic economics. IP can be copied at a cost of 0, therefore it has no scarcity. I can download songs of Napster or Gnutella or whatever, so I don't pay for them in the store on a CD. With nanotech, the same thing will happen to matter. That leaves only services to make money from, which, as I remember, is what bands used to do and still do when they are not popular and don't sell many CDs. This is much like how open source software makes money, where programmers are paid for doing the work that no one else wanted to and companies sell tech support.

Did you actually read the article, or did you do the kneejerk "0p3n s0urc3 rul3z!" reply?

This is asking the question "How do artists make money?" Not about software. Notice the difference.

That street performer thing is great if you are Stephen King, Prince, or someone who is already fabulously wealthy — doesn't do much for the new guys.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again — stop devaluing intellectual production. If you do, we'll be back into the scenario where the people who own the factories will have all of the money.

If you want to devalue anything, start devaluing physical products and things at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs first.

If you think for a living, and then it becomes unprofitable and you cannot pay your bills, people will begin to do things that involve NOT thinking for a living. Do you really want everyone back on the assembly lines so they can pay the bills?

If you devalue from the bottom up, then you will see an uplift, as humanity will be forced to think and produce intellectual product. Otherwise, it's back to the coal mines, guys.

The Washington Post has a brief story on "an overqualified busker" about John Cougar Mellencamp who's touring around with two other acoustic performers giving free concerts. "The singer has said he wants to perform on the streets for free to give something back to his fans. 'I'm just playing for the people.' "

Software is free, in general and it's easy to get, because software is like maturity, it's something that you can over and over add something on, at a level, the software is more available for everybody. The samething will be applied to matter, in that sense. Matter will become software. Today, the first step is like, a reality, IP, Open Source etc.., but with digital matter, wow.