[pp.int.general] "Intellectual property"

[I.K.]

>
>
> To *refer* to copyright, patents and all of that is not the only job the
> term "intellectual property" does.  It has second job: to determine *way
> of thinking* about copyright, patents and so on.  Nobody thinks of
> guinea pigs as pigs (well, probably somebody who hears that word for the
> first time does think so); but many think (and try to persuade others to
> think) of copyright as a form of property, of unauthorized copying as
> "theft" and of supportes of freedom to copy as "communists" and
> "opponents of property right".
>


> Actually thats the reason why the word "intellectual property" was
> defined ;) "Its property, so it should be treated like any other property".
>


> They believe that copyrighted material is property so they call it
> property to clarify this. We believe its not ? so we call it otherwise ;)
>

It is completely beyond me why you guys keep equating the ideas of
"property" and "intellectual property".

Are guinea pigs just pigs? No, they aren't. So they are called "guinea pigs"
for this exact reason: to DIFFERENTIATE them from what they are not (pigs).
If they were just pigs, they would have been called that - "pigs".
Same with IP:
Is intellectual property just property? No, everybody knows that. So it is
called "intellectual property" for this exact reason: to DIFFERENTIATE it
from what it is not (property). If IP was (or was conceived to be by
copyright advocates) just the same as any other kind of property, it would
have been called that - "property". I mean, why would people come up with a
special term in this case? There are no special terms for other kinds of
property (like cars, real estate, whatever it is that we have in our
possesion), so if anybody wanted to treat copyrighted material like any
other kind of property - they would just called it that, "property". Yet a
different term is being used, which implies that IP is DIFFERENT from
"property".

Cheers,
Ilya.
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