Was thinking of this after a conversation I had on a thread about dreams. Someone joked “I was dreaming of the events of The Matrix, then I was woken up by someone worried my dream was infringing the Wachowski’s copyrights”, and it turned into a whole train of thought in my mind, like violating IP law because you stole fire from Zeus which was his intellectual property.
Parents own their child’s genome because they authored it.
I brought you into this world, so I can take you out of it! GO BRUSH YOUR TEETH!
That’s it young man, I’m revoking your DNA privileges
We’re already there, there’s no need for this hypothetical. We’ve reached the point where we have trademarked plants, and natural cross-pollination with neighbouring fields has led to fines to farmers because they’re technically growing someone else’s intellectual property plant.
Vaccines and drugs whose research is paid for with public funds are copyrighted and poorer nations are forbidden from obtaining them at reasonable prices.
Vanguard technologies like FPGAs are seeing a rise in later years not because the concept is new, but because 40-year-old key patents of the technology started to expire and this allowed third parties to improve on the technology, and increase its availability and affordability.
Time and time again, software and hardware designed and published with open source but licensed copyright (or copyleft) are blatantly copied and modified without permission by big tech, without any credit or compensation to the original author, in complete violation of the license terms, and nothing ever happens because they have better lawyers than the small open source people.
AI models are unlawfully trained illegally with immense amounts of copyrighted material, and then substitute artists with real understanding of the art.
No need to make up hypotheticals for a society in which this already happens
You only have the rights to your likeness until 70 years after the death of your author (your mom)
Alternatively, your mom starts with the rights, and you never even get them. (unless she sells them to you)
“Sorry kiddo, you took a selfie, so now I’m taking you to court.”
I’m going to sue you because you used my likeness without permission in the reflections on your windows…
Rape could be tried as a copyright violation, probably have better results in the courts. (A sad state of affairs)
The trademark on Grandma’s Mac and Cheese (or other recipe of choice) would start fights at Thanksgiving.
