Just Calling Something Property, Doesn’t Make It Property
23rd November 2010
For years, we’ve pointed out how rather insidious it is to refer to copyright and patents as “property,” as it leads to those who support traditional property rights to default to supporting these government-granted monopoly privileges as if they were property.
I’ve always been of opinion that ‘intellectual property’ was an intellectual handjob, like ‘social justice’. The essence of property if you’ve got it, nobody else has it, or can have it, and that just doesn’t apply to information.