Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
So, at heart, you do not believe that I have the same right to protect my intellectual property as I have to protect, say, my car. Or the hand-crafted bookshelf I built.
(Maybe we need an "Is IP worth protecting?" thread somewhere...)
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I'll add an addendum to Ramen's response. When does a piece of property stop being "your" property? This is not a trivial question. If I bought your bookshelf, does it not become "mine"? Do you still maintain "rights" over it after purchase? What legal controls do you need to maintain those "rights"?
In the physical world, these questions are moot. I buy it, it's mine. I can use it, make copies of it, or roll over it with a tank. My property, my choice - and having sold it, you would have no say in what I do.
The digital (I.P.) world is different. The creator maintains an ownership interest in what is being sold (actual the purchaser is being granted a limited sublicense, to be precise) for a limited period of time. Yes, there needs to be laws to protect those ownership rights. But what laws and how are they best enforced. (And what precisely are the terms of those sublicenses? What has the purchaser actually bought?)
But the right of property <does not> override all other rights in a free society (it does override in authoritarian socialist and corporatist societies). These rights are a balancing act between competing needs, of which property ownership rights are just one, which means that some property rights are not going to be enforced as vigorously as some owner might want; due to the societal cost being too "high". You seem to be in favor of extremely vigorous property rights enforcement, others on the forum consider privacy rights far more important. Competing needs, in a nutshell.