alt Hacker News> What you are proposing is akin to suggesting "any buildings should become public domain" or "any cars they own should go to a local charity".
I don't think this is accurate. I think they are proposing priority for the consumer in the hierarchy of creditors that is a little more specific about assets than the usual hierarchy.
All IP and licensing rights to IP could become specially encumbered during bankruptcy to enable a consumer priority on it, etc. I don't think it would be more difficult than some of the existing setup, but naturally much of the existing setup is more in theory than in practice.
Yup. This. The bankruptcy system already has tiered creditors (senior, junior, secured, unsecured) who take precedence in certain orders during bankruptcy.
In fact this already exists in accounts payable situations: customers may take precedence for goods not received before creditors, etc (depending on location and laws of course). But usually they don’t, sadly.