Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
An "idea" is not intellectual property, and is not protected by law.
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OK. I was trying to distill my thought down into one tiny little nugget to get my point across, and my first response to that response was, "Well, I can concede that point even though I think it's just being nitpicky". But upon reflection, I'm going to stand behind it 100%. We're talking about ideas here. Sure, they may be long, complicated ideas, and they may be expressed as music, writing, performance, software or whatever, but it's still the idea itself - and the ability to profit from it - that people are talking about when they mention IP.
So, since my attempt a brevity to make my point failed, I'll try quoting from Wikipedia:
Quote:
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Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman argues that, although the term intellectual property is in wide use, it should be rejected altogether, because it "systematically distorts and confuses these issues, and its use was and is promoted by those who gain from this confusion." He claims that the term "operates as a catch-all to lump together disparate laws [which] originated separately, evolved differently, cover different activities, have different rules, and raise different public policy issues" and that it creates a "bias" by confusing these monopolies with ownership of limited physical things, likening them to "property rights".[16] Stallman advocates referring to copyrights, patents and trademarks in the singular and warns against abstracting disparate laws into a collective term.
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That says it better than I ever could. The bolding is mine, just to emphasize the point that I was originally trying to make.
And, BTW, I think quoting Wikipedia in a debate about the value of copyright as it pertains to the encouragement of the creation of new content and the enrichment of our society makes a point, too.