IP Schism: Musk, Dorsey “Wormhole” Creates Legal Divide
Key Takeaways
- The tech world is buzzing after Jack Dorsey proposed we should just get rid of intellectual property law altogether.
- This idea really throws a wrench into the works, exposing a clear clash between those who love the idea of decentralized systems and how things are usually done legally.
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Get ready for a debate! Jack Dorsey just threw a curveball by suggesting we should completely ditch IP laws, and Elon Musk is backing him up, but it’s safe to say not everyone’s on board with this idea.
In a statement that landed on Friday, the co-founder of Block and Twitter—you know, now called X—proposed something pretty radical: abolishing all forms of intellectual property law, from copyright to patents.
delete all IP law
— jack (@jack) April 11, 2025
Dorsey’s tweet immediately set off a flurry of reactions across X, with people jumping into the conversation to discuss the role of IP in our digital world. The big question everyone’s asking is: how would getting rid of these laws impact creativity and new ideas?
Interestingly, quite a few folks are actually agreeing with Dorsey, including Musk and Bitcoin enthusiast Max Keiser. Their argument? Intellectual property laws are actually holding back progress and stifling fresh thinking.
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IP law is effectively a global lobotomy of our collective unconscious.
Everything (all ideas) come from our joint consciousness and should return there unencumbered by corporate interests ASAP.
— Max Keiser (@maxkeiser) April 12, 2025
Some are pointing out that maybe the current IP rules just aren’t cutting it anymore in the digital age. They argue that these laws can create artificial scarcity where there shouldn’t be any and hand too much control to monopolies.
Chris I think it’s worth understanding there’s a genuine free market case against IP. IP is actually a state granted monopoly that impinges on what I believe should be genuine individual or business freedom to build, to innovate.
For example see Against Intellectual Monopoly…
— Stephan Livera (@stephanlivera) April 12, 2025
Agreed. Burn the entire regime.
The moment you do, innovation will explode like never before. Culture will accelerate. Technology will evolve in real time. Ideas will stop being hostage to legal fiefdoms and start flowing like code in open source.
IP law doesn’t protect…
— FRΞΞ PRINCΞ (@tyrannideris) April 11, 2025
However, plenty of tech world names and creators aren’t feeling Dorsey’s idea at all. Chris Pavlovski, CEO of Rumble (you know, the ones who just jumped into the Bitcoin corporate reserve trend), was pretty clear about his disagreement.
No!@jack and big tech want to push this garbage so they can get all your data and content for free.
They hate IP law because they can’t steal it for AI.
— Chris Pavlovski 🏴☠️ (@chrispavlovski) April 11, 2025
Pavlovski’s worry is that if IP protections vanish, big tech companies could just gobble up copyrighted stuff to train their AI without asking permission or paying creators a dime.
This is a horrible take.
Creators IP must be protected.
Big tech wants to steal content for AI purposes.
Creators put huge effort and make livings off their works, and you just proposed to destroy that world.
— Chris Pavlovski 🏴☠️ (@chrispavlovski) April 11, 2025
Jason Zhao, co-founder of Story protocol, even threw a bit of shade by tweeting a screenshot showing all of Block’s patents, responding directly to Dorsey’s call to scrap IP laws.
— jasonzhao.ip (@jasonjzhao) April 11, 2025
Carol Roth, the New York Times bestselling author of ‘You Will Own Nothing,’ is firmly in the camp that believes IP laws are super important for protecting what creators make.
Property rights are natural rights, and intellectual property is as much property as something physical.
Nobody else should be able to copy my books and profit from them.
Nobody else should be able to take a brand name or logo and put it on clothing.
— Carol Roth (@caroljsroth) April 12, 2025
Adam Simecka, founder of Manna Bitcoin Wallet, gets the inventor’s side of things—patents can be great. But he also thinks the IP system as it is gets “abused by corporations” sometimes. Still, he’s not sure that just scrapping IP altogether is the answer.
Patents allow people in this country with good ideas that don’t have a lot of money to be able to invest in their invention with the hope of making a profit before a massive corporation can steal it.
IP law is abused by the corporations. Getting rid of it might not be the answer
— Adam Simecka (@AdamSimecka) April 12, 2025
Funny enough, Musk has said before that patents are “for the weak,” but even the tech whiz has used them to protect some of his own bright ideas.
Back in June 2014, Musk actually opened up Tesla’s patents for anyone to use in good faith, without fear of lawsuits.
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