Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk would like to 'delete all IP law' (techcrunch.com)

Over the weekend Jack Dorsey tweeted “delete all IP law,” and Elon Musk quickly chimed in “I agree,” reigniting debate about patents and copyright at a time when major AI firms (including OpenAI) face lawsuits alleging their models were trained on copyrighted material without permission. The exchange prompted sharp reactions: some tech advocates argue current IP regimes hobble innovation and creators need new payment models, while rights advocates and certification groups like Fairly Trained warn that scrapping IP would amount to “pillaging” creators’ work. Nicole Shanahan and others pushed back, saying IP is what legally distinguishes human from machine creations and that reform — not abolition — is the proper route. For the AI/ML community, the kerfuffle highlights concrete legal and technical fault lines: dataset licensing, provenance tracking, and model training pipelines are increasingly litigated and will shape how data is collected and reused. If IP protections were weakened or redesigned, it would upend incentives for artists, complicate model evaluation and benchmarking, and could spur automated enforcement regimes (e.g., fines or “three-strike” rules) that affect both companies and individual users. Legacy anti‑IP stances from Musk and Dorsey echo past moves (like Tesla’s patent pledge) but translating social-media proclamations into policy is uncertain — yet the debate matters because it will influence licensing standards, compliance engineering, and the economics of model development going forward.