[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward

Andrew H, I'm not certain you grasp the difference between Real and intellectual property. The difference is massive and important.

Simply put, when you sell a piece of real property, of whatever sort, you transfer total ownership of said piece of property. The new owner is under no obligation to do anything you may prefer to the property. it his property now.

Umm, from the post you quoted:

If I own a store and you steal my inventory, I lose money because I can't sell it to anyone else. If I write e-books and you give away copies of my e-book to people who would otherwise have purchased it, I lose money because I can't sell it to them. This is really simple point. And it is a much more important point than esoteric arguments that nonrivalrous goods aren't property.

With I.P. you claim to retain all rights to copy. But you Sold a property!
You can't have it both ways.

Why not?

The difference between rivalrous and nonrivalrous property is of long-standing and I don't know of anyone who would seriously contend that nonrivalrous property isn't property that can be owned, bought, sold, leased, etc.

Property is a collection of rights, and you can still have an ownership interest in property without having all the rights. If I rent you a house, you don't have the right to sell the house, but you do have the right to occupy the house, to exclude others from the house, and maybe to sublet the house.

If I sell you an e-book, I am selling you the right to read the book and to otherwise use it in accordance with whatever terms you agree to when you buy the book. You still have property rights in the book, even though you may not have some rights in the book. But it doesn't matter from a property perspective that I could sell the same book to someone else.

And you certainly haven't pointed out why it should matter. The fact that I sell an e-book to you, granting you certain rights and retaining other rights, is no different from many other types of transactions in property.

The fact that I can sell the same book to someone else means that we're dealing in with nonrivalrous property, which has some different characteristics from rivalrous property (as does personal property vs. real property), but that fact has no bearing on the sales transaction between purchasers and sellers. I mean, how would it - because I sold you a nonrivalrous good, you are allowed to sell it to everyone? Of course that doesn't make any sense; if you want to sell it to everyone, you should buy the copyright.

Again, if I lease you a house and put a "no-sublets" clause in the lease, you still have many rights in the property: you can occupy it, exclude people, etc. But you're not allowed to lease it to anyone else...even if you aren't occupying it. If you wanted that right,you would need to buy the house,or pay more for the right to sublet.

Society allows it to be both ways for a limited period of time to encourage more I.P. production. Period. Not to create a perpetual new kind of property, just an extra carrot.

Yes, that's the reason society allows IP...and IP isn't perpetual. But society has fiddled with property for as long as there has been property. You couldn't even *sell* real property in England until 1290. IP isn't really any different. But it's still property.