[pp.int.general] The IIPA Reports

[Richard Stallman]

    It's not that bad. The term "intellectual property" is used almost only
    in quotations. The only line it's used directly is:
    > In fact, IP enforcement is often even more strict in the open source
    > community, and those who infringe licenses or fail to give appropriate
    > credit are often pilloried.

This statement is actually about copyright.  Referring to it as "IP"
is precisely the confusion that the IIPA wants.

    As for the term itself, I think it has as much meaning as the law gives
    it.

The "meaning" that the IIPA uses does not come from law.  And the term
misleads people about the real laws and their stated purposes.  Nearly
everything people say about "intellectual property" is a mistake.  For
instance:

    What the term means now would be much better described as "information
    monopoly", since it makes the possession of certain information illegal
    unless you're the "owner",

Copyright law doesn't do anything like that.  Patent law doesn't do
anything like that.  Trademark law doesn't do anything like that.
Even trade secret law doesn't quite do that.

Please don't take this personally.  There is a systematic reason why
you made this mistake.  Namely, you assumed that the term
"intellectual property" is meaningful and refers to some concrete and
important similarity of these various laws.  There is no such
similarity.  You tried to formulate a description of something that
never existed.

The basic falsehood in the term "intellectual property" is that
these laws are really similar in some concrete way.  They are not.
Nearly every attempt to say what "intellectual property" means
leads to such an error.

See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html for more explanation.

That's why I think this project is misguided:

	I want to prepare a summary/brief of the worst IP enforcement
    laws/sentences worldwide, but specially interested in EU countries.

By using the term "IP" it promotes that misguided way of thinking
which serves the opposition.

It would be useful to make such a list for copyright.  And another
list for patents.  I think these two lists would not be similar.