Quote:
Originally Posted by DuckieTigger
Here is the fundamental flaw why intellectual property is not property that can be owned. You can have it, and once you have it you own it, because it is stored as an idea inside your brain. So far so good, it is yours in every way imaginable. Now if you share that idea with someone else, then they have it. It is inside their head, they own their own personal instance. That instance they own, you don't own it, because you don't have it inside your head. How do we share a thought or an idea? We write down instructions on how to infuse that idea into someone's brain. The instructions are written down in a book. If you follow the instructions by reading them, you will infuse your brain with your own idea inside your head, similar to the original. What copyright gives you is a monopoly on exploiting those specific instructions.
So what exactly do you own? The IP itself you don't own, everybody that read the book now has it, owns it. The instructions itself printed in a book you don't own, because you sold those instructions. The only thing that you got left is being marked as the creator of those instructions to have first published them. And laws give you the exclusive rights to exploit them.
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One of the things I have tried to say, but not well, is that it seems to me that what we actually own - regardless of the property type - is a set of rights.
Possession is one thing: what you sit on or grasp in your hand or in your head. But ownership is something else, something entirely abstract - like the law, like rights expressed by law, and like property in the sense used by law and commerce (a thing owned).
Thus, whatever the various generalisations and simplifications that otherwise exist - because it can be difficult to separate a thing from the rights to that thing - we have two aspects to any property: the thing, and ownership rights to that thing. The thing exists regardless, but ownership (rights) only exist as defined by law. So property-ness is inherently linked to ownership and the law; if the law does not define your ownership rights then the status as a property in this context may well be up for grabs.
When we own a piece of land what we actually own are the rights that law gives us to that land (and these are
not absolute). Eminent domain, or it's equivalent, still exists in many (most/all?) jurisdictions, so at least in theory the law can be changed such that your rights to the land that you currently think you own could be set to expire 70 years after your death. It is the abstract nature of ownership and ownership rights (the law) that makes all property (in the sense used by law and commerce) so similar (but still not identical, since the reason for law to define rights will vary with the nature of the thing).
And this...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Apache
It sounds like you want it both ways. If it wasn't for the law giving you the copyright, would there be a law protecting said copyright?
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is central to IP: Copyright only exists as a property because the law has defined rights and undertaken to protect those rights. The law is what makes intellectual property a property. It's almost circular logic but we have a couple of centuries of evidence that this works, whatever theoretical objections may otherwise arise.