ysabetwordsmith (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ysabetwordsmith) wrote2014-06-13 01:45 pm
ysabetwordsmith) wrote2014-06-13 01:45 pm
Entry tags:
Tesla for Everyone
The Tesla company, a leading manufacturer of electric cars, has just ditched their patents in favor of placing that information into open source access. The goal is to encourage more people to use the designs to create more and better zero-emission cars.
Like copyright, patents began as a way of protecting intellectual property so that people could profit from their work and would thereby be encouraged to invent more things, thus benefitting everyone. Currently patents have become a morass of legal mayhem that stifles innovation as much as copyright does. The current trend toward open-source work shows how sharing instead of hoarding can also result in more goodies for everyone.
The challenge we have here is making sure that our creators -- whatever their field -- have some reliable way of making a living so that they can make the goodies we all enjoy. Crowdfunding is great for individual projects. Some people have done really well at it. I'm one of them; although it's not enough for a secure living, it's a stupendous success in light of poetry's marginal position in this society. But crowdfunding doesn't tend to produce a steady income stream. Some other things that have been proposed include a Basic Income and a Reverse Income Tax, both of which would ensure that everyone has enough to meet basic needs. We need to do something, because it's clear that corporations no longer want to employ people at a living wage, so we can't rely on them to keep the economy running anymore. Somebody else needs to step in and make sure that citizens have a way to meet their needs, so that they can do things like invent stuff, write stuff, raise the next generation, and pay bills.
Like copyright, patents began as a way of protecting intellectual property so that people could profit from their work and would thereby be encouraged to invent more things, thus benefitting everyone. Currently patents have become a morass of legal mayhem that stifles innovation as much as copyright does. The current trend toward open-source work shows how sharing instead of hoarding can also result in more goodies for everyone.
The challenge we have here is making sure that our creators -- whatever their field -- have some reliable way of making a living so that they can make the goodies we all enjoy. Crowdfunding is great for individual projects. Some people have done really well at it. I'm one of them; although it's not enough for a secure living, it's a stupendous success in light of poetry's marginal position in this society. But crowdfunding doesn't tend to produce a steady income stream. Some other things that have been proposed include a Basic Income and a Reverse Income Tax, both of which would ensure that everyone has enough to meet basic needs. We need to do something, because it's clear that corporations no longer want to employ people at a living wage, so we can't rely on them to keep the economy running anymore. Somebody else needs to step in and make sure that citizens have a way to meet their needs, so that they can do things like invent stuff, write stuff, raise the next generation, and pay bills.
excited
A few people will try to manufacture Tesla engines as they appear on the patents, sure, but there's no way they can compete with production on that scale. And Tesla is in effect promising to turn a blind eye to every. single. attempt.
Where this is going to be a G-dsend, isn't in the US market. This will open India, Japan, China, both North and South Korea, and Saudi Arabia, among others, to a /quick/ path to copied-Tesla engines put into the cheapest local chassis available.
In five years, the number of electric cars on the road INTERNATIONALLY will have grown exponentially. (Of course, as the number still hovers depressingly close to zero, there's PLENTY of room for improvements.)
And Tesla Motors will be free to focus on their CURRENT design goal: an all-electric car with a 500 mile range (That's FIVE times what the American automakers consider sufficient for their customers.) And I hope they achieve that within two years, because THAT innovation is what will push the costs of the two-year-old Teslas down closer to middle-class-affordable levels.
Re: excited
*chuckle* No wonder that guy in my poem went apeshit when Green Man wrecked his new Tesla. I would've been screaming at the supervillain too.
Re: excited
no subject
You know it also works a different way than the conventional one.
Well...
Also, other folks get interested in my stuff, and sometimes they want to play in my worlds. This is how I got shanghaied into gaming back in high school. It was a madhouse and we had a ball even though I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I learned. I've spent years working in Torn World, a shared world setting, to practice collaboration and the fine art of not throwing a tantrum when people do things that annoy me.
What I get out of this is access to other people's skills that I don't have. Several times, musician friends have made songs out of my poetry. Awesome! Most recently, Dreamwidth user Dialecticdreamer created this amazing piece of demifiction, "Flickering," as a YouTube presentation. It's set in my Polychrome Heroics series. Recently Nine for the Nebula's Heart emerged as another shared-world setting, inspired partly by my prompts, and officially using Creative Commons for its licensing. If I kept shoving people out of my sandbox, I wouldn't have those goodies. I like goodies.
Yes, people have stolen my stuff, although that's not a problem I've had much in crowdfunding. My most widely snitched piece is the essay "Secrets of the Inner Circle." People often post it without attribution, which annoys me. But the only way to keep from having your stuff stolen is not to release it in the first place, which if you want an audience, is counterproductive. Yes, you can use mainstream copyright/patents and hire expensive lawyers to scream at people; but look at the pirate wars and you'll see that isn't stopping anything. It's just bogging down the culture with fights. I don't see that as terrifically effective.
I'm like those guys at Tesla. I'm a hardcore empiricist. I will set a goal, look at options for pursuing it, and try one. If it doesn't work, I will try a different one. Being a linguist, and therefore stubborn, I will keep trying until I find something that works or I come to the end of the English language and have to start nailing new words onto the end of it. I started out aiming for the mainstream of writing. I've been professionally published. It's okay if you can get it to work. I'm not averse to using again when convenient. But many of the people in charge of it kinda think they don't have to pay writers and can fuck around however they want. This is neither fun nor profitable. Happily I have found that crowdfunding is full of people who LOVE creators and want to support each other's projects. This works much better for me.
YMMV. I encourage everyone to research options, test them, and make an informed choice about what works for them. Observe reports in the industry about good and bad things people are doing. Decide what you want to support. You can go with copyrights/patents. You can go with Creative Commons. You can leave stuff in your desk drawer or dump it into the public domain. It's your stuff, and you can keep it yours or share it a little or give it to everyone. Just make sure that you know what your goals are and whether your choices are helping or hurting those goals. The guys at Tesla realized that patents weren't helping them expand electric car use. I realized that mainstream publishing was producing only a trickle of income and not being very effective at raising awareness of my favorite topics. So we're trying different things.
Re: Well...
Say, there's not much I hear about that sector, but things still seem to run a little conventional here. Also because of laws and legal rules.
Every time where topics like "copyright" and "musicians need to be paid" (that's the most popular topic that appears in relation to the first) arise again, it always comes down to the conclusion "we need to punish pirates more and protect our property", in popular media even the artists talk like that (meaning, these are only the public voices; those ones who do differently don't receive some on-air time).
Intelligent mind anytime asks itself "when you're busy with protecting all the time, do you still even care for that somebody buys your material?" because they're also killing their promotion slowly but surely.
But, as always in the position of an intelligent mind, nobody's listing and they're on their ways.
Re: Well...
If you treat people well, a majority of them will return the favor. If you make people feel like they're being manipulated and robbed, many of them will hate you and try to strike back. Don't mistake a bottleneck for loyalty; if you ever lose the ability to force people to buy your products, they will desert in droves. A captive audience is NOT the same as a loyal fanbase.
People pirate things because (among other reasons):
* they can't afford to pay
* they don't feel the product is worth the price
* they feel that companies are mistreating them
* they associate products more with the company than the artist
* they want to try before they buy
It's not an optimum social interaction.
Re: Well...
Fighting with YouTube, pay services to listen to full songs (also nothing without registering) - that's just mistreatment of the last point "people want to try before they buy". Lots of other fights have been there that I can't recall right now.
If you follow those discussions you get the impression enterprises which administer culture (books, music, movies, video games) are just only busy with getting the most out of the stuff they own rather than making people buy it all. - Although last option should be more of their concern.
Another thing is that in discussions about copyright, things like patents never seem to appear. It's mostly about music and movies - the big products.
Although intelligent mind knows patens also belong to that.
That literally makes the point which side the discussion is biased by.
no subject
Go for it!
no subject
Tesla the company, like Tesla the man, is showing up and helping *everyone*. Elon Musk *gets it*.... on the Internet, which originated as a gift economy, the BMOC is the guy who gives away the most good stuff. I *hope* it will be difficult for some corporate Tom Edison to come rough him up....
(There was a time when Edison was my hero; I remember being in the play "The Electric Sunshine Man" when I was a kid... Like the inside of an old light bulb, his reputation has gotten decidedly sooty of late. Doesn't shine so well.)
Yes...
Exactly. It's the same for me. I had to ask someone to explain to me, at the beginning of my fangirl days. I was baffled, and a little wary, why famous people repeatedly picked me out of a crowd of 400 people. It was because I treated them like regular folks and let them talk about the weather if that's what they wanted. Apparently it's a very rare trait. Go figure.
>> Tesla the company, like Tesla the man, is showing up and helping *everyone*. <<
Yea, verily.