Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk would like to ‘delete all IP law’

Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter (now X) and Square (now Block), sparked a weekend’s worth of debate around intellectual property, patents, and copyright, with a characteristically terse post declaring, “delete all IP law.”

X’s current owner Elon Musk quickly replied, “I agree.”

It’s not clear what exactly brought these comments on, but they come at a time when AI companies including OpenAI (which Musk co-founded, competes with, and is challenging in court) are facing numerous lawsuits alleging that they’ve violated copyright to train their models.

Indeed, tech evangelist and investor Chris Messina alluded to this while writing that Dorsey “has a point,” because, “Automated IP fines/3-strike rules for AI infringement may become the substitute for putting poor people in jail for cannabis possession.”

Others were less sympathetic to this argument, with Ed Newton-Rex (whose nonprofit Fairly Trained certifies AI training practices that respect creators’ rights) describing the Dorsey-Musk exchange as “Tech execs declaring all-out war on creators who don’t want their life’s work pillaged for profit.”

And the writer Lincoln Michel wrote that “none of Jack or Elon’s companies would exist without IP law,” adding, “They just hate artists.”

Dorsey elaborated on his stance in subsequent replies, writing that there are “much greater models to pay creators” while claiming “the current ones take way too much from them and only rent-seek.”

He made a similar point when attorney (and former Robert F. Kennedy Jr. running mate) Nicole Shanahan pushed back with an all caps “NO.”

“IP law is the only thing separating human creations from AI creations,” Shanahan said. “If you want to reform it, let’s talk!”

Dorsey countered, “creativity is what currently separates us, and the current system is limiting that, and putting the payments disbursement into the hands of gatekeepers who aren’t paying out fairly.”

Musk’s reply is at least consistent with statements he’s made in the past, for example telling Jay Leno that “patents are for the weak.”

A decade ago, in a so-called “patent giveaway,” he pledged that Tesla would not enforce patents against other companies that used them “in good faith.” (The company subsequently sued Australia’s Cap-XX over patents, but it said that was a response to a lawsuit Cap-XX filed against a Tesla subsidiary.)

And Dorsey has shown an interest in open source approaches to social media, most notably initiating the project that eventually became Bluesky, though he seemed to become disillusioned and eventually left Bluesky’s board. (Bluesky CEO Jay Graber recently said Dorsey’s departure “freed up” the company from seeming like a billionaire’s side project.) 

It’s also worth noting that the line between a random conversation on Twitter/X and actual government policy is thinner than it used to be, with Musk joining the Trump administration and pushing mass layoffs through his Department of Government Efficiency — named after a meme and largely staffed from the tech world.