Delete All IP Law? Structural Consequences of Dorsey's Digital Demolition View

Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter (now X) and Block, recently sparked controversy with a terse post declaring "delete all IP law," promptly endorsed by Elon Musk's "I agree." This exchange raises fundamental questions about the viability of intellectual property systems in our current technological environment.

Rather than evaluating this proposal through moral or ideological lenses, an Autogenic Realist assessment examines how systems function under real constraints and their demonstrated capacity to generate coherence, adaptability, and developmental momentum.

Assessing "Delete All IP Law"

Dorsey's absolutist position warrants structural evaluation. What would deleting all IP law actually do to system viability?

Complete IP law elimination would produce specific systemic changes:

• Immediate Boundary Collapse: (1) Without copyright, patent, and trademark protection, formal barriers to reproduction and reuse would disappear, creating an immediate structural shock to industries built around controlled distribution. (2) Companies like Disney would lose exclusive control over characters and content, pharmaceutical companies would face immediate generic competition, and luxury brands would confront unrestricted reproduction of their identifiers.
• Alternative Boundary Formation: (1) Systems don't function without boundaries - they would quickly re-emerge through different mechanisms. (2) Technical protection measures (DRM) would proliferate as companies attempt to create artificial scarcity through encryption and access controls. (3) Private contracts would expand to create legally enforceable boundaries, potentially creating more fragmented and less transparent governance. (4) Trade secret protection would increase as companies withhold information that would previously have been disclosed through patent applications.
• Feedback System Transformation: (1) Creator compensation would require new structural pathways not dependent on exclusivity. (2) Patronage models (like Patreon), attention markets (like YouTube's Partner Program), and service-based approaches (consulting, live performance, customization) would expand. (3) First-mover advantages would become more critical, with value capture shifting from long-term control to immediate market response.
• Resource Allocation Shifts: (1) Investment would flow away from projects requiring extended return periods toward those with rapid return cycles. (2) Public funding would need to expand for long-term, high-risk innovation previously incentivized by patent protection, particularly in fields like pharmaceutical development. (3) Network effects and data advantages would become even more dominant as competitive moats, potentially increasing rather than decreasing concentration in digital markets.

The historical example of fashion—an industry with minimal IP protection—demonstrates both possibilities and limitations of low-protection environments. Fashion has vibrant creativity and rapid innovation cycles, but also struggles with sustainability, labor conditions, and concentration of power in platform gatekeepers like major retailers.

Dorsey's claim that "much greater models to pay creators" exist remains underspecified. While examples like Bandcamp, Patreon, and GitHub sponsorships show alternative viability patterns for certain creator types, these haven't demonstrated capacity to sustain all forms of creative production at scale, particularly those requiring significant up-front investment.

Current IP Law Under Pressure

To understand the context of Dorsey's proposal, we must examine the current IP system and its emerging constraints:

The present intellectual property system consists of several interconnected mechanisms designed to protect creative works and innovations:

• Copyright law grants creators exclusive rights to their works for extended periods (currently life of the author plus 70 years in the US), controlling reproduction, distribution, and derivative works. For example, Disney's continued control over Mickey Mouse has required multiple copyright term extensions, with early versions only recently entering the public domain in 2024.
• Patent law provides temporary monopolies (typically 20 years) on inventions, requiring public disclosure but restricting implementation without permission. Apple's "slide to unlock" patent (US Patent No. 8,046,721) demonstrates how even simple interaction patterns can be locked behind legal barriers that persist for decades.
• Trademark law protects brand identifiers to prevent market confusion and maintain quality signals. The red soles of Christian Louboutin shoes represent how even colors can become protected identifiers in specific contexts.
• Trade secret law safeguards confidential business information that provides competitive advantage. The Coca-Cola formula has remained protected for over a century not through patents but through secrecy laws.

These structures emerged under specific historical conditions where creation, reproduction, and distribution involved significant physical constraints and substantial capital investments. The system was designed to solve the practical problem of ensuring creators could capture enough value to sustain continued innovation.

However, this system now faces unprecedented pressure from technological shifts that have fundamentally altered the constraints it was designed to address:

1. Digital reproduction has reduced marginal costs to near-zero, as seen with music streaming where the cost to deliver another copy approaches zero.
2. Global connectivity has transformed distribution economics, allowing independent creators like those on YouTube to reach worldwide audiences without traditional publishers.
3. AI systems can now process and synthesize vast quantities of existing works, as demonstrated by the 2023 New York Times lawsuit against OpenAI for training on their articles without permission.
4. Decentralized networks enable new coordination mechanisms, evidenced by Wikipedia's emergence as a comprehensive knowledge source produced without traditional copyright incentives.

The conflict isn't simply about ideology but about structural misalignment between systems designed for different constraint environments.

Competing Viability Patterns and Their Feedback Mechanisms

Dorsey's proposal reflects tension between two distinct viability patterns that have emerged in response to changing technological conditions:

Creator-Centered IP System: This pattern developed in industrial economies where reproduction costs were significant and creator-audience relationships required mediation. It generates coherence through: This system excels at concentrating resources for capital-intensive development but demonstrates increasing dysfunction as enforcement costs rise and feedback delays grow. The pharmaceutical industry illustrates both sides: patents enable billion-dollar R&D investments but also create access barriers and encourage "evergreening" strategies that extend monopolies beyond their intended duration.

1. Market signals translated through sales and licensing revenue. For example, music publishers track radio plays and streaming to distribute royalties, often with years of delay between creation and compensation.
2. Legal enforcement actions that indicate boundary violations. The Recording Industry Association of America's lawsuits against individual file-sharers in the early 2000s exemplify how litigation serves as feedback rather than market signals.
3. Intermediary gatekeepers who filter and amplify certain works. Traditional book publishing demonstrates this mechanism, where editors and marketing departments—not readers—decide which manuscripts reach the market.
4. Delayed financial returns that shape future creative decisions. Hollywood's sequel-driven model shows how past performance dictates future investment, often prioritizing predictability over innovation.

Open Innovation System: This pattern emerged in digital environments where reproduction costs approach zero and feedback can occur without intermediaries. It produces coherence through: This system demonstrates advantages in rapid adaptation and distributed problem-solving but faces challenges with resource concentration and long-term investment incentives. The Wikipedia project exemplifies both strengths (comprehensive coverage through distributed contribution) and limitations (difficulty funding infrastructure and coordinating major architectural changes).

1. Direct creator-audience relationships without intermediaries. Patreon creators receiving monthly support directly from fans represent how value can flow without traditional gatekeepers.
2. Rapid iteration based on immediate usage patterns. The Linux kernel development process shows how continuous feedback from users drives incremental improvement rather than scheduled releases.
3. Contribution metrics like commits, forks, and modifications. GitHub's visible activity metrics create reputation signals that function as non-monetary incentives for continued participation.
4. Community governance providing boundaries and standards. The Apache Software Foundation demonstrates how open projects maintain quality through structured contribution processes rather than ownership controls.

Dorsey's claim that current IP systems "take way too much from [creators] and only rent-seek" reflects a specific structural observation: traditional feedback loops between creation and compensation have been compromised by intermediaries that extract disproportionate value while delaying signals. The music industry provides a concrete example—Spotify reported paying $7 billion to rights holders in 2021, yet individual musicians received only a fraction of these payments, with most going to labels, publishers, and collecting societies.

Boundary Function Assessment

IP laws fundamentally operate as boundary-setting mechanisms. Attorney Nicole Shanahan argues that "IP law is the only thing separating human creations from AI creations," suggesting these boundaries perform an essential function.

The structural question is whether these boundaries are appropriately calibrated to current operating conditions. Concrete examples reveal potential misalignment:

• Software APIs: The Google v. Oracle case demonstrated boundary rigidity problems when Oracle claimed copyright over Java APIs, threatening to block interoperability across software ecosystems. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled APIs could be fair use, showing how traditional boundaries required judicial recalibration for digital environments.
• Academic Publishing: Scientific knowledge boundaries have become increasingly dysfunctional as journals charge thousands for access to publicly-funded research. Sci-Hub's widespread use (despite its illegality) reveals a boundary failure where legitimate access paths no longer match researcher needs.
• 3D Printing: Physical product designs now face boundary enforcement challenges as digital files can be shared and materially reproduced outside traditional distribution channels. DMCA takedown notices for 3D printable gun parts demonstrate how boundaries designed for media struggle with physical-digital crossover.
• Cultural Remix: Sampling in music illustrates boundary calibration problems where creative recombination requires clearing numerous rights at prohibitive costs. The Beastie Boys' "Paul's Boutique" (1989) contained hundreds of samples that would be financially impossible to clear under today's enforcement regime.

These examples reveal not just isolated disputes but structural mismatches between boundary mechanisms designed for previous technological contexts and current creative practices.

Coherence Under Pressure

Lincoln Michel observed that "none of Jack or Elon's companies would exist without IP law," highlighting an apparent structural contradiction. This raises a key diagnostic question about Dorsey's proposal: Does his system demonstrate alignment between stated purpose and operational patterns?

Specific instances of this contradiction appear throughout the tech sector:

• Tesla's Patents: While Musk now claims "patents are for the weak," Tesla initially secured hundreds of patents before announcing in 2014 they would not enforce them against good-faith users. This reveals a strategic shift from boundary protection to ecosystem growth once the company achieved market dominance.
• Twitter/X API Access: Dorsey's platform initially thrived by allowing third-party developers broad access to its API, then gradually restricted that access to protect its advertising business model. This oscillation between openness and control reflects internal coherence tension.
• Open Source Commercialization: Companies like MongoDB have shifted from open-source licenses to more restrictive terms specifically to prevent cloud providers from offering their software as a service without compensation. This demonstrates how pure openness struggles to sustain development when faced with asymmetric extraction capabilities.
• AI Training Data: While advocating for the elimination of IP law, many AI companies simultaneously assert copyright over their model outputs. Meta's Llama model licensing terms illustrate this contradiction – demanding free access to others' content for training while restricting how others can use their resulting model.

These examples reveal not mere hypocrisy but genuine structural challenges. Systems that begin with one viability pattern often face pressure to adopt elements of competing patterns as they scale or as conditions change. Dorsey's assessment should focus not on consistency for its own sake, but on whether his proposed structural changes would enhance or degrade system-wide viability.

Systemic Implications

The debate carries implications beyond tech billionaires' opinions. With Musk's role in the Trump administration and his Department of Government Efficiency, "the line between a random conversation on Twitter/X and actual government policy is thinner than it used to be." This structural reality transforms Dorsey's proposal from speculative discourse into potential governance shifts with system-wide consequences.

Real-world examples illustrate these implications across nested contexts:

• Individual creators and their viability: Independent musicians face drastically different outcomes under different IP regimes. Artists like Ani DiFranco, who avoided major labels and maintained ownership of her catalog, demonstrate viable alternatives to traditional IP-centric models. Meanwhile, artists like Taylor Swift have fought to regain control of their masters after traditional IP arrangements left them without ownership of their work.
• Creative communities and their feedback patterns: The video game modding community shows how creativity flourishes when companies like Bethesda allow and support modifications to games like Skyrim, creating symbiotic relationships between official and community development. Conversely, Nintendo's aggressive copyright enforcement against fan projects has repeatedly disrupted community creativity without clear benefits to the company's viability.
• Economic systems and their adaptive capacity: The pharmaceutical industry in India developed significant manufacturing capacity under a patent regime that, until 2005, protected processes rather than products. This alternative boundary calibration allowed for affordable medicine production while maintaining innovation incentives, demonstrating how different IP calibrations produce different system-wide outcomes.
• Global knowledge ecosystems and their boundary calibrations: The COVID-19 vaccine development and distribution revealed how IP boundaries impact public health outcomes. While Operation Warp Speed's funding accelerated development, patent protections later constrained manufacturing capacity in lower-income countries. The temporary TRIPS waiver debate demonstrated deep structural tensions between innovation incentives and access requirements.

These examples reveal how IP systems operate not just as legal frameworks but as fundamental coordinative structures that shape viability across multiple scales. When Jack Dorsey calls to "delete all IP law," he's advocating for a structural reorganization with cascading effects through these nested systems.

Forward Integration

Rather than embracing Dorsey's absolutist position to "delete all IP law," an Autogenic Realist approach would identify specific dysfunctions in current feedback loops, boundary functions, and adaptive mechanisms, then implement targeted interventions that enhance system-wide viability.

This might include:

• Redesigning feedback channels between creators and audiences: (1) The Bandcamp model demonstrates more direct creator compensation, with monthly "Bandcamp Fridays" where the platform waives its revenue share. This structural innovation strengthens feedback between fan support and artist sustainability. (2) Smart contracts on blockchain networks are testing automated rights management and instant royalty distribution, potentially eliminating the multi-year delays in traditional royalty systems.
• Recalibrating boundaries to match technological realities: (1) The Creative Commons licensing framework shows how creators can selectively reduce boundary friction while maintaining control over commercial exploitation. (2) Fair use doctrine expansion for computational analysis, as implemented in some jurisdictions, recognizes that reading-to-learn (by humans or machines) requires different boundaries than copying-to-redistribute.
• Building adaptive capacity for ongoing adjustment: (1) Copyright term reduction proposals (reverting to the original 14-year term, renewable once) would allow faster adaptation to changing conditions while maintaining core incentive functions. (2) The Content ID system on YouTube, despite its flaws, demonstrates how automated rights management can operate at scale without requiring individual litigation for each boundary violation.
• Ensuring coherence between stated purpose and structural function: (1) Public funding models for scientific research that require open access publication demonstrate alignment between investment purpose (advancing knowledge) and distribution structure. (2) Patent pools for essential technologies like the Medicines Patent Pool show how collective management can maintain innovation incentives while improving access.

Real-world examples like Finland's copyright reform hearings, which involve creators, technologists, and public interest representatives in structured dialogue, demonstrate how system redesign can incorporate multiple viability patterns rather than choosing one absolute position.

The ultimate measure isn't ideological purity but demonstrated capacity to maintain viability under real constraints. Dorsey's proposal, while provocative, fails to account for the complex adaptive systems that would emerge in an IP-free environment—systems that would likely recreate many of the boundary functions he seeks to eliminate, potentially with less transparency and public accountability.