Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
Are we starting over again? How many loops does this make?
It is fairly simple: you are both wrong.
In the context we are discussing, copyright is property. It is because we say it is. (That government granted monopoly gives you rights under law, those rights are called copyright and the rights are a thing you own - hence property. Notice the distinction: it is not the words you own, it is the rights, the copyright, that is the property.) Have a problem with that, go change the law and/or the rules of economics (oh, and the dictionary). In the meantime just accept that, for all relevant intents and purposes, copyright is property.
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And the answer is that no it's not. You may wish to redefine the word to make it property, but that doesn't make it property. It is simply a limited time grant of a monopoly to make copies of a specific work. That does not translate to own. It does not translate to property.
The idea of a limited time grant of control of an object is quite common in the real world. Few argue that leasing something is the same as owning it.
You can sublease a house that you rent to someone else. That doesn't imply that you actually own the house. It is quite common for one country to grant another country a 99 year lease on a piece of land for a lot of reasons, but most usually for military bases.
However, once someone attaches the word "Intellectual Property" to ideas like copyright and patents, then people seem to see that word and think "oh, property, ergo they own it, it belongs to them forever", which is of course was the purpose behind coining that phrase. No one seems to be able to articulate an argument on why copyright and patents should be considered property and ought to belong to the current holder forever, they just say "well, it's property because I say it's property". But, hey, the term does make it easier to get government to keep extending the length of the monopoly. It's really a form of rent seeking.