Your IP Has Been Reset

This argues that AI is rapidly destroying the scarcity that underpins the value of knowledge work and intellectual property. Where IP once lived behind organizational walls and generated rent through controlled access, models now decompile, analyze and recombine code, designs and text, eroding exclusivity. Legal responses to large-scale data harvesting have been slow and financially inadequate compared with the windfall those models produced; examples given include companies buying millions of books, slicing their spines for scanning, then pulping them, and settlements that look paltry next to corporate valuations. The essay invokes Cory Doctorow’s "enshittification" to show how access-based business models angered consumers, and argues AI accelerates that collapse.

Concrete instances illustrate the claim: recent mass paper releases by OpenAI, a developer rebuilding Adobe’s suite for free, decompiled classic console games running in browsers, and mash-ups recombining cultural artifacts demonstrate how previously scarce assets are becoming ubiquitous. The piece frames this as a wholesale reset of IP - a “back to square one” moment where accumulated proprietary advantage dissolves, provoking a mix of resentment and opportunism from creators and technologists who can now flip the old enclosure logic.