THE LOWDOWN:
Block founder Jack Dorsey called to “delete all [intellectual property] law,” sparking backlash online.
Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski blasted Dorsey’s call as being “against constitutional intent” and “against human nature.”
Artificial intelligence’s role with intellectual property has become an increasingly scrutinized question.
Removing all US intellectual property law would require a constitutional amendment.
America is a nation of innovation. We lead the world in science, economics, and a cornucopia of other fields, and the U.S.’s robust intellectual property laws — enshrined in the Constitution — form the legal framework to foster innovation.
Now, at the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), intellectual property and its theft have been thrust into the spotlight as these new technologies crawl the Web in aggregation.
And one technology leader who built his career off of intellectual property wants to get rid of “all” of intellectual property law.
“Delete all [intellectual property] law,” Block founder and former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey wrote on his former platform, now X.
But, one of Dorsey’s peers did not take the call sitting down. Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski launched an offensive against Dorsey’s hare-brained idea. Pavlovski told the Washington Reporter that the “Intellectual Property Clause of the U.S. Constitution is the basis for copyright and patent law in America, which is how creators are able to maintain ownership of what they create.”
“To suggest that this be eliminated, as Jack Dorsey has, is not only against constitutional intent, but it’s also against human nature and the innate right of people to own what they produce from their own minds and creativity,” Pavlovski told the Reporter. “In a free society, in no way should it be permissible for anyone to steal the intellectual work product of another, just because it happens to suit their own business model.”
“Too many AI and tech companies want to build their fortunes on the backs of others by stealing their hard work,” he said. “That should not be supported or allowed because IP protections are the backbone of innovation. How many people would create new things if they knew that someone was going to just steal it from them? All this is why Rumble will continue to lead the way — on free speech and on compensating creators for the content they provide to the world.”
It is important to note that AIs do not create. AIs can only repackage what already exists on the Internet which is more often than not under copyright or another intellectual property protection. These actions by AI have led to legal battles in the copyright sphere.
Additionally, Dorsey’s financial technology company Block utilizes several different technologies under intellectual property protections to conduct its business, including the financial app CashApp, ecommerce platform Square, and TIDAL — a platform for musicians to share their music that relies heavily on intellectual property laws.
Innovators are in luck, though: for all intellectual property law to end in America, the Constitution itself must be amended — something most, if not all, states are not inclined to do in general, especially on this matter.
Block did not immediately respond to the Reporter’s request for comment.