Cory Doctorow has an article in The guardian about the silliness of “intellectual property”. The article begins with the obvious marketing of the term: aren’t you more sympathetic to someone who has had their “intellectual property stolen” than “industrial entities who’ve had the contours of their regulatory monopolies violated”?
The important bit is that “intellectual property” is not property, in any proper sense of the term. You cannot be excluded from intellectual property. Once you have heard a song, you can’t unhear it because it “belongs” to someone else.
As he says:
Copyright – with all its quirks, exceptions and carve outs – was, for centuries, a legal regime that attempted to address the unique characteristics of knowledge, rather than pretending to be just another set of rules for the governance of property. The legacy of 40 years of “property talk” is an endless war between intractable positions of ownership, theft and fair dealing.
If we’re going to achieve a lasting peace in the knowledge wars, it’s time to set property aside, time to start recognising that knowledge – valuable, precious, expensive knowledge – isn’t owned. Can’t be owned. The state should regulate our relative interests in the ephemeral realm of thought, but that regulation must be about knowledge, not a clumsy remake of the property system.