Quote:
Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj
[SNIP]
I have several problems with IP:
1) if it's property, why does it revert to public domain after a time? It would make sense for it to stay a property and licence forever. It's said that it's not really a property, but it's called property. Bad naming.
[BIG SNIP]
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With respect to this, you may find it instructive to look up the concept of a "leasehold." When you hold a long-term lease on a property—the 99-year ground-leases often found in Hawaii are a good example—you have the right to continue to occupy the property and to use it
as though it were yours through the end of the lease... as long as you keep making the lease payments, of course. The interesting thing is that a leasehold is often treated as a time-limited property right. It can be sold to another person. It can be used as collateral on a bank loan. It can be treated as an asset under GAAP (that's Generally Accepted Accounting Principals, for those who may be having trouble with the alphabet soup).
A leasehold is a physical-world property right that is remarkably similar to Intellectual Property. It's only temporarily yours, and will eventually revert to the "real" owner. In my Hawaiian long-term ground lease example, that's most likely to be one of the old noble (or royal) families of Hawaii. For a copyright or patent, the "real owner" is... everyone. The people as a whole.
Xenophon